Architecture Description
An architecture description is an artifact describing the architecture for some system of interest. In ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, system refers to man-made and natural systems, including software products and services and software-intensive systems. Architecture descriptions have a variety of uses. Per ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, an architecture description conforming to the standard is expected to include:
- identification and overview information of the architecture being expressed;
- identification of the system stakeholders and their concerns;
- definitions for each architecture viewpoint used in the architecture description and a mapping of all concerns to those viewpoints;
- an architecture view and its architecture models for each architecture viewpoint used;
- correspondence rules and correspondences and a record of known inconsistencies among the architecture description’s required contents;
- architecture rationale (explanation, justification, reasoning for decisions made about the architecture being described).
ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 organizes an architecture description into multiple architecture views. An architecture view addresses one or more concerns held by stakeholders of the system being described. An architecture view describes the architecture of the system of interest in accordance with the rules and conventions defined in its architecture viewpoint. Each architecture view must have an architecture viewpoint.
Read more about this topic: ISO/IEC 42010, Conformance To ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010
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