SASSY – Analysis, Part 6

Views and Viewpoints

The proposed design is documented in a series of Views, each from the viewpoint of one or more stakeholders.

It is important to keep the number of viewpoints in each diagram or document to a minimum, otherwise there will be confusion over what the document is trying to express. This means that for a large system there can be a multitude of documents, which can become a hindrance to the understanding of the system in its own right.

In the paper [M&B05] describe six types of architectural views – behavioural and a structural views for each of the conceptual, logical, and execution architecture. They go on to suggest the following should form the minimum set:

• Reference Specification. The full set of architecture drivers, views, and supplements such as the architecture decision matrix and issues list, provides your reference specification.
• Management Overview. For management, you would want to create a high-level overview, including vision, business drivers, Architecture Diagram (Conceptual) and rationale linking business strategy to technical strategy.
• Component Documents. For each component owner, you would ideally want to provide a system-level view (Logical Architecture Diagram), the Component Specification for the component and Interface Specifications for all of its provided interfaces, as well as the Collaboration Diagrams that feature the component in question.

For SASSY the knowledge base forms the reference specification. The management overview seems to be a collection containing the original project vision statement, the preliminary analysis, in addition to a view showing the conceptual architecture. The component documents outlined above would be a good start, but you will also want other views, such as a network view and a database view, that have a system wide perspective.

There are a lot of different views that can be created for a complex system. Various researchers have attempted to classify these views into view models, such as the 4+1 Architectural View. Despite these models the views for any particular system should be carefully selected according the specific requirements of the project.

The core ontology for SASSY will need to have a collection of views defined along with a relationship that allows the components of the design to be associated with one or more views. We might also include view models so that the user can quickly select a collection of views that will have good coverage of the design.



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References

M&B05: Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer, Software Architecture: Central Concerns, Key Decisions, 2005