Architecture (glossary)

(1) The fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution (ISO/IEC 2008, Section 4.5)

(2) The organizational structure of a system or component (ISO/IEC 2009, 1); the organizational structure of a system and its implementation guidelines (ISO/IEC 2009, 1)

(3) Fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution. (ISO/IEC 2011)

(4) A system architecture includes several viewpoints or architectures; as a minimum a functional architecture, a behavioral architecture, a temporal architecture, and a physical architecture.

Source

(1) ISO/IEC/IEEE. 2008. Systems and Software engineering — System Life Cycle Processes. Geneva, Switzerland: International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electronical Commission (IEC). ISO/IEC 15288:2008 (E).

(2) ISO/IEC/IEEE. 2009. Systems and Software Engineering — System and Software Engineering Vocabulary Geneva, Switzerland: International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)/Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 2009 ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765:2009 [database online]. Available from http://pascal.computer.org/sev_display/index.action.

(3) ISO/IEC/IEEE. 2011. Systems and Software Engineering — Architectural Description. Geneva, Switzerland: International Organization for Standards (ISO)/International Electronical Commission (IEC), ISO/IEC 42010:2011.

Discussion

A few definitions are presented here to provide illustrations of how some different authors define architecture. Note that many authors write extensively on architecture without ever defining what they mean by the term.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 - Normative: see above. The architecture associated with a System of Interest is conceptual, and is realized through an architectural description.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 - Normative - see above definition.

OMG.2010. - Normative: “The organizational structure and associated behavior of a system. An architecture can be recursively decomposed into parts that interact through interfaces, relationships that connect parts, and constraints for assembling parts.”

Stevens et al (Stevens.1998) - Informative, paraphrase: “The layout, structure and behavior of a system at a level of abstraction that allows useful reasoning about the system as a whole.”

UML 2010. Unified Modeling Language. Version 2.3. Needham, MA, USA: Object Management Group