From Principles to Details: Integrated Framework for Architecture Modelling of Large Scale Software Systems

There exist numerous models of software architecture (box models, ADL’s, UML, architectural decisions), architecture modelling frameworks (views, enterprise architecture frameworks) and even standards recommending practice for the architectural description. We show in this paper, that there is still a gap between these rather abstract frameworks/standards and existing architecture models. Frameworks and standards define what should be modelled rather than which models should be used and how these models are related to each other. We intend to prove that a less abstract modelling framework is needed for the effective modelling of large scale software intensive systems. It should provide a more precise guidance kinds of models to be employed and how they should relate to each other. The paper defines principles that can serve as base for an integrated model. Finally, structure of such a model has been proposed. It comprises three layers: the upper one – architectural policy – reflects corporate policy and strategies in architectural terms, the middle one –system organisation pattern – represents the core structural concepts and their rationale at a given level of scope, the lower one contains detailed architecture models. Architectural decisions play an important role here: they model the core architectural concepts explaining detailed models as well as organise the entire integrated model and the relations between its submodels.