Purpose: The Formal Signature provides the grammar to enable search and retrival of specific patterns. Formal signatures are used in the reuse process in order to retrieve patterns which are appropriate for a given situation having a given usage intention in mind. A formal signature has a situation part and a usage intention part.
The situation precisely describes the applicability conditions which must hold for re-using the pattern. It comprises of two facets :

Fields:

Name: A concise name constructed of 3-5 words without spaces between them, but each word starting with a capital letter.

Type: The type of the pattern (Actor/Role, Role/Activity, Object, Rule, Goal, Change process patterns)

Domain: A description of  the activity domain for which the pattern is applicable to (Customer servicing, restructuring, etc.).

Usage intention: The usage intention expresses the goal to be achieved by the use of the pattern. It ‘drives’ the whole process of using patterns. It has two facets :
A verb (invoice, change, ...), and
A set of parameters. Parameters are described as a set of sub-facets: source, target and manner. Each parameter plays a different role with respect to the verb, some of them having sub-types (e.g. target has two sub types: object and result). The target designates what is affected by the usage intention (electricity consumption, CBS structure. We distinguish two types of targets, objects and results. As opposed to objects, the results are affected by the usage intention. They do not exist prior to the usage intention. In the first example below, the target "electricity consumption" refers to the value of what has been consumed and does not exist prior to the measurement, it is the result of the measurement. In the second example, the "current situation" is the object of the associated change process whereas the CBS structure is the result of the intention.
 
 Examples:
 
 Measure verb (electricity consumption)result
 Change verb (current situation) object (to CBS structure) result
 
 
The source identifies the origin of what is affected by the usage intention (meter reading). The source "from meter reading", in the first example, identifies the origin of the electricity consumption measurement. Similarly, the "monopoly structure" in the second example, refers to the existing structure model which will be directly affected by the change process.

 Examples :
 
 Measure verb (electricity consumption)result (from meter reading) source
 
 Change verb (current situation) object (from monopoly structure)source (to CBS structure) result
 

The manner parameter is used to express in which way the usage intention is achieved (automatically, using meter readers, keeping staff). In the first example, the manner refers to the ways electricity can be measured, this in fact could be done in various ways, either automatically or by asking meter readers to collect the appropriate information. Concerning the second example, the intention is to change the structure model from monopoly to CBS in a way which allows to avoid lay-off.
 
Examples:
 
Measure verb (electricity consumption)result (from meter reading) source (using meter readers) manner
 
Change verb (current situation) object (from monopoly structure)source (to CBS structure) result (keeping staff) manner

According to the structure of the formal signature defined above, a thesaurus of all possible values for the introduced facets can be created.

The following are two full examples

Pattern Body: The pattern body is the conceptual model as an EKD model or other multimedia presentation which represents the pattern