On the Composition and Reuse of Viewpoints across Architecture Frameworks

Abstract

A central aspect of architecting is architecture description. Architecture descriptions take many forms and serve many purposes throughout the life cycle of development, operation and maintenance activities. The use of multiple views -- diverse representations for distinct audiences and uses -- has been a major tenet of architecture description since the earliest work in software architecture. This tenet has been codified in various ways. Most practising software architects must operate within the confines of a prescribed architecture framework (AF) or architecture description language (ADL) as dictated by their organization or client. Current AFs and ADLs are defined with varying degrees of rigour and offer varying levels of tool support, furthermore, these resources are often closed, making it difficult for the architect to tailor a representational solution to the specific challenges of the project at hand. In this paper we propose an automated infrastructure to support the architecture description-related activities of the architect. This infrastructure facilitates customization, composition and reuse of the architect's representational resources (AFs, ADLs and their constituents) to meet project-, domain- and organization-specific needs. The proposed approach builds upon the conceptual foundations of ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 for architecture description. The approach has been evaluated in the context of a complex, real-world, public transportation system.