what is this design pattern?

[soupy]

i'm doing something, but i don't know what to call it. is this an accepted design pattern?

 

background:

• i have a configuration class for my application
• the configuration class contains paths to external (excel) files
• you must parse out the external files and put their information back into the configuration class. i refer to this step as "parsing"
• i'm passing the parsed configuration class over the network to an RT system, so my configuration class can't have any dependencies to non-RT stuff (e.g. Excel (ActiveX))
• everything is dynamic dispatch so i can get some reuse out of this design pattern
  

 
explanation:

• in this example, i have an array of configuration classes
• all parsing functions are in methods of a "parser" class (chain link wire)
• there is one parser class for each configuration class
• the configuration class knows the path to the parser class
  

 

So, does anyone have an official name for this sort of thing? I've been referring it as "side loading". Anyone have any lessons learned on this approach? Am i running head first into any traps?

[soupy]

cross posted here https://decibel.ni.com/content/message/64013