A classification of software reference architectures: Analyzing their success and effectiveness

A software reference architecture is a generic architecture for a class of information systems that is used as a foundation for the design of concrete architectures from this class. We observe that certain reference architectures have become more successful than others. One of the reasons for this is the level of congruence between their goals, context, and design. In this paper, we provide a framework for the classification of reference architectures. Using our framework on a set of reference architectures, and based on experiences with reference architectures, we define five main types of reference architectures that have congruent goals, context, and design. Reference architectures that can be classified in one of these types have better chances to become a success. We illustrate our conclusions with a number of reference architectures. This research facilitates design of more effective reference architectures.

[1]  Paul W. P. J. Grefen,et al.  A Reference Architecture for Workflow Management Systems , 1998, Data Knowl. Eng..

[2]  Interim Report: ANSI/X3/SPARC Study Group on Data Base Management Systems 75-02-08 , 1975, FDT Bull. ACM SIGFIDET SIGMOD.

[3]  Mike Metcalfe,et al.  Reading critically at university , 2006 .

[4]  Paul Grefen,et al.  Referentie-architectuur : off-the-shelf architectuur , 2008 .

[5]  Paul W. P. J. Grefen,et al.  Towards a Method for the Evaluation of Reference Architectures: Experiences from a Case , 2008, ECSA.

[6]  H Hongjing Wu,et al.  A reference architecture for adaptive hypermedia applications , 2002 .

[7]  Alex Norta,et al.  Exploring Dynamic Inter-Organizational Business Process Collaboration , 2008 .

[8]  Rick Kazman,et al.  Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies , 2001 .

[9]  Fabrizio Massimo Ferrara,et al.  The standard 'Healthcare Information Systems Architecture' and the DHE middleware , 1998, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[10]  Hans van Vliet,et al.  The many faces of architectural descriptions , 2006, Inf. Syst. Frontiers.

[11]  Paul Clements,et al.  Software architecture in practice , 1999, SEI series in software engineering.

[12]  M Demeester,et al.  Healthcare Information Framework. , 1995, International journal of bio-medical computing.

[13]  Paul W. P. J. Grefen,et al.  An e-contracting reference architecture , 2008, J. Syst. Softw..

[14]  Juan A. Colmenares,et al.  A reference software architecture for the development of industrial automation high-level applications in the petroleum industry , 2007, Comput. Ind..

[15]  G. Muller.  A Reference Architecture Primer , 2008 .

[16]  Brian P. Gallagher,et al.  Using the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method SM to Evaluate a Reference Architecture: A Case Study , 2000 .

[17]  Danny Greefhorst,et al.  Achmea streamlines application development and integration , 2006 .

[18]  Harald C. Gall,et al.  Architecture Recovery for Product Families , 2003, PFE.

[19]  J. Girard,et al.  Definition of Reference Architectures based on Existing Systems WP 2 . 2 , Platforms and Components , 2004 .

[20]  H. Zimmermann,et al.  OSI Reference Model - The ISO Model of Architecture for Open Systems Interconnection , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

[21]  D. Hollingsworth.  The workflow Reference Model , 1994 .