A Representational Framework for Architectural Analysis

Architectural objects are expressed through a variety of abstractions, each presenting a different aspect. In an architectural analysis, abstractions can be treated as individual entities, categorized, and hyperlinked within an organizational structure. However, such systems lack the possibility to distinguish individual components within the abstractions and to relate these within and between abstractions. Instead, by adopting a uniform language such as XML as a common syntax for representing these abstractions, these can be interpreted and broken up into components, these components related, and the relationships added to the representation. The result is a richer information structure: an integrated structure of components and relationships represented in a uniform way. This information structure can provide new views not inherent to the original structure of abstractions, offering new interpretations that can lead to new abstractions. This paper discusses a prototype application for representing abstractions using XML, and the strengths and limitations of XML for this task.