Software Systems Architecture: Working with Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives, Second Edition

18. The Information Viewpoint

The ultimate purpose of any information system is to manipulate data in some form. This data may be stored persistently in a database management system, in ordinary files, or in some other storage medium such as flash memory; or it may be transiently manipulated in memory while a program executes.

Nowadays, many organizations possess massive amounts of information on their customers, their products or services, their own internal processes, and their competitors. Although some of this information may be hard to access, inconsistent, and inaccurate, it still represents a substantial asset—one that, if correctly used, ...