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According to the definition by Clements et al, what constitutes a software architecture?
What is the focus of documenting a software architecture?
Which of the following is a characteristic of software architecture according to Bass, Clements, and Kazman?
What is the purpose of defining software architecture?
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What is the significance of structures in software architecture?
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What does the term 'externally visible' properties refer to?
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What information does an architecture omit about elements?
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What is the primary concern of architecture in a system?
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What can be said about the structure of a system?
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What type of structure focuses on the way the system's functionality is divided up and assigned to implementation teams?
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Study Notes
Software Architecture Definitions
- The SEI has compiled a list of modern, classic, and bibliographic definitions of software architecture.
- Modern definitions are from Software Architecture in Practice and ANSI/IEEE Std 1471-2000, Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems.
- Classic definitions appear in prominent or influential books and papers on architecture.
- Bibliographic definitions are taken from papers and articles in the software architecture bibliography.
Definition 1: Documenting Software Architectures
- The set of structures needed to reason about the system, comprising software elements, relations among them, and properties of both.
- This definition emphasizes the plurality of structures present in every software system.
- Structures consist of elements, relations among the elements, and the important properties of both.
- Documenting a structure entails documenting these components.
Definition 2: Software Architecture in Practice
- The software architecture of a program or computing system is the structure or structures of the system, comprising software elements, externally visible properties, and relationships among them.
- "Externally visible" properties refer to those assumptions other elements can make of an element, such as its provided services, performance characteristics, fault handling, shared resource usage, and so on.
- Architecture defines elements and embodies information about how the elements relate to each other.
- Architecture omits certain information about elements that does not pertain to their interaction.
- An architecture is foremost an abstraction of a system that suppresses details of elements that do not affect how they use, are used by, relate to, or interact with other elements.
- Elements interact with each other by means of interfaces that partition details about an element into public and private parts.
- Architecture is concerned with the public side of this division; private details of elements are not architectural.
- Systems can and do comprise more than one structure, and no one structure holds the irrefutable claim to being the architecture.
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Description
Explore the different definitions of software architecture, including modern, classic, and bibliographic definitions from various sources.
