The <i>Proxy</i> pattern is used in software development to create a placeholder for an object. "<i>Proxies provide an interface to another object such as a network connection, a large object in memory, a file, or some other resource that is expensive or impossible to duplicate.</i>" - Proxy Pattern, Wikipedia

"<i>Any operations performed on the proxies are forwarded to the original object. Once all instances of the proxy are out of scope, the complex object's memory may be deallocated. </i>" - <b>Proxy Pattern, Wikipedia.org</b><br />There are four common situations where a Proxy pattern is required: