Knowledge in an SOA Infrastructure Reference Architecture

In this chapter, we present an industrial case study for the creation and usage of architectural knowledge. To establish the context of our usage of architectural knowledge, we introduce business domain, service portfolio, and knowledge management approach of the company involved in the case in a first section. In this first section, we briefly review general architectural concepts such as viewpoints, methods, and reference architectures. Not all of these concepts pertain to architectural knowledge explicitly; however, they helped us to create and leverage such knowledge successfully. An understanding of our usage of these concepts helps to appreciate the central role of architectural knowledge in the case. As a reader who is familiar with these concepts and is primarily interested in our usage of architectural knowledge, as opposed to its context in the case, you may want to skip this first section. Next, we introduce a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure reference architecture as a primary carrier of architectural knowledge in this company. Moreover, we present how we harvested architectural knowledge from industry projects to create this reference architecture. We also present feedback from early reference architecture users. Finally, we conclude and give an outlook to future work.