What is the difference between Builder Design pattern and Factory Design pattern?

What is the difference between the Builder design pattern and the Factory design pattern?

Which one is more advantageous and why ?

How do I represent my findings as a graph if I want to test and compare/contrast these patterns ?

Answer

With design patterns, there usually is no "more advantageous" solution that works for all cases. It depends on what you need to implement.

From Wikipedia:

• Builder focuses on constructing a
  complex object step by step. Abstract
  Factory emphasizes a family of product
  objects (either simple or complex).
  
  Builder returns the product as a final
  step, but as far as the Abstract
  Factory is concerned, the product gets
  returned immediately.


• Builder often builds a Composite.


• Often, designs start out using Factory Method (less complicated, more
  customizable, subclasses proliferate)
  and evolve toward Abstract Factory,
  Prototype, or Builder (more flexible,
  more complex) as the designer
  
  discovers where more flexibility is
  needed.


• Sometimes creational patterns are complementary: Builder can use one
  of the other patterns to implement
  which components get built. Abstract
  Factory, Builder, and Prototype can
  use Singleton in their
  implementations.

Wikipedia entry for factory design pattern:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_method_pattern

Wikipedia entry for builder design pattern:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder_pattern