Model-Based System Architecture

Chapter 16Architecture Frameworks

The term architecture framework is frequently misunderstood. It is often assumed that an architecture framework provides a kind of abstract or common template for a systems architecture. Something like a “skeletal architecture” of a certain kind of system, whose gaps just must be filled to get a full architecture for a system. For example, one could guess that the general architecture for an aircraft, like body, wings, propulsion subsystem, landing gears, power, and energy subsystem, and so on is abstractly defined in a kind of “Architecture Framework for Aircrafts”, and the systems engineer could use that framework as a starting point for an aircraft systems architecture development.

But that's not correct.

Of course, there are proven base architectures, sometimes also called reference architectures, for miscellaneous kinds of systems in the systems engineering domain, but architecture frameworks didn't define them!

But what are architecture frameworks instead? The international standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011 Systems and software engineering — Architecture description [64] defines architecture framework as conventions, principles and practice to describe an architecture. An architecture framework according to the standard is for a specific domain of application or community of stakeholders.

As a first notice about this definition is that it is about the description of architectures. So that these architecture descriptions comply with certain ...