Inheritance makes it easy to define new patterns from other patterns.
The use of multiple inheritance is in most cases justified in inheritance of code and may lead to complicated inheritance structures. In BETA it is not possible to define a pattern with multiple superpatterns corresponding to multiple inheritance . There are indeed cases where it is useful to represent classification hierarchies that are not tree structured. However, a technical solution that justifies the extra complexity has not yet been found. A compound object inherits from its parts as well as its superpattern.