Representation of Reference Architectures: A Systematic Review

Software architectures play a major role in determining system quality, since they form the backbone to any successful software-intensive system. In this context, reference architecture is a generic architecture for a class of software systems used as a foundation for the design of concrete architectures from this class. Because of their fundamental role, reference architectures need to be properly represented in order to be effectively used, and understood by all stakeholders. In this perspective, we have found initiatives proposing different approaches to represent them. However, there is a lack of detailed overview about all these approaches. In this paper, we identify possibly all approaches used or proposed to represent reference architectures. For this, we have used a technique proposed by Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE): the Systematic Review. As achieved results, we can observe different approaches adopted to represent reference architectures; however, there is no consensus about which are more adequate or their effectiveness. Based on this overview, interesting and important perspectives for future research can also be found.