Systems and Software Architecture: The Commonality of Concepts

摘要

While the relationship between systems and software architecture is frequentlyrncomplex, it is not necessarily complicated. In detail it deals with a complex variety ofrnrepresentations, quality attributes, relationships, and design elements. However, this variety canrnbe captured in relatively few unifying concepts. As software development costs are coming torndominate overall system development costs in many applications, finding a reconciliation ofrnarchitecture concepts is of increasingly value. The most important core concepts are therndistinction between architecture and architecture description, the differing roles of standards forrnarchitecture and architecture descriptions, the distinction between view and viewpoint (orrnviewtype, in some of the literature), and the use-dependence of the depth of architecturalrninformation.