A Multi-Level Software Architecture Metamodel to Support the Capture and Evaluation of Stakeholder Concerns

摘要

Software development projects are often influenced by a wide variety of concerns from numerous stakeholders, including domain experts, end users, application developers, and system integrators. Types of concerns include domain requirements (e.g. domain functions and data), application requirements (e.g. look-and-feel, runtime requirements), and implementation requirements (e.g. middleware, operating system). The Systems Engineering Process Activities (SEPA) and its 3D Architecture approach involve actively separating stakeholder concerns into multiple respective architctures: Domain Reference Architecture (DRA) - a high-level architecture capturing domain data, functionality, and timing requirements; Application Architecture (AA) - an architecture specifying required functionality from the DRA and the applications satisfying that functionality; and Implementation Architecture (IA) - an architecture designed to constrain the installation of applications in the AA. By separating different types of requirements across architectures, SEPA helps designers and system integrators identify candidate applications for reuse or development across domain problems and customer installation sites. Example domains that SEPA has been applied to include cancer treatment protocol development, emergency incident response, and joint military forces command and control. Descriptions of these architectures as well as example usage are described in this paper.