A presentation of the Model View Controller pattern. MVC is a time tested method of separating the user interface of an application from its domain logic.

This report examines the relationship between service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and quality attributes. Because software architecture is the bridge between mission/business goals and a software-intensive system, and quality attribute requirements drive software architecture design, it is important to understand how SOAs support these requirements. Interesting section that summarizes the positive and negative effects that using an SOA has on a system’s quality attributes.

This technical report fits the Carnegie Mellon® Software Engineering Institute's (SEI's) architecture-centric methods into the framework of the RUP.

This technical note fits the architecture-centric methods of the Carnegie Mellon® Software Engineering Institute (SEI) into the framework of Extreme Programming (XP). These methods include the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method®, the SEI Quality Attribute Workshop, the SEI Attribute-Driven Design method, the SEI Cost Benefit Analysis Method, and SEI Active Reviews for Intermediate Design. This report presents a summary of XP and examines the potential uses of the SEI's architecture-centric methods.

This article illustrates examples of combinations of the architecture-centric analysis and design methods and when the combinations could be applied during the life cycle.

This paper presents the Architecture Based Design (ABD) method for designing the high-level software architecture for a product line or long-lived system. Designing an architecture for a product line or long-lived system is difficult because detailed requirements are not known in advance. The ABD method fulfills functional, quality, and business requirements at a level of abstraction that allows for the necessary variation when producing specific products. Its application relies on an understanding of the architectural mechanisms used to achieve this fulfillment.

Business goals are the foundation on which software systems are justified, analyzed, and built. Software systems are constructed to realize business or mission goals. Software architecture is the bridge between the business goals and the realized system. Those claims about business goals underlie many methods for designing and analyzing software architectures. This report provides a categorization of possible business goals, so that stakeholders can have guidance in the goals' creation, expression, and documentation.

This report compares the Software Engineering Institute's "Views and Beyond" approach for documenting software architectures with the documentation philosophy embodied in agile software-development methods. This report proposes an approach for capturing architecture information in a way that is consistent with agile methods.

The resources available to build any system are finite. The decisions involved in building any nontrivial system are complex and typically involve many stakeholders, many requirements, and many technical decisions. The stakeholders have an interest in ensuring that good design decisions are made--decisions that meet their technical objectives and their tolerance for risk. These decisions should, as much as possible, maximize the benefit that the system provides and minimize its cost. The Cost Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM) was created to provide some structure to this decision-making process. The CBAM analyzes architectural decisions from the perspectives of cost, benefit, schedule, and risk.

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web. This document is a roadmap for DITA: what it is and how it applies to technical documentation.