Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 32Reference Architecture: An Integration and Interoperability‐Driven Framework

Joel S. Patton¹ and James D. Moreland²

¹ Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation, Arlington, VA, USA

² Virginia Tech University, Grado Department of Industrial and Systems, Blacksburg, VA, USA

Definition of a Reference Architecture

Why Is an Architecture Useful?

As the complexity of systems and systems‐of‐systems (SoS) has grown so have the challenges for organizations to create, share, and utilize them effectively. To better address these challenges, it is necessary to create and apply ideas, principles, procedures, and modeling tools to support decision‐making in an architectural framework. The use of architecture‐based processes is now a common practice in commercial, government, civil, and military domains.

The application of an “architecture” is now applied to systems and to other entities that are not traditionally considered to be systems, such as enterprises, services, data, business functions, mission areas, product lines, families of systems, software items, etc. The concept of an architecture used in this document refers to a “reference architecture,” which extends beyond the traditional use where the architecture entity can be considered a system or SoS. When the word architecture is used without any reference to its particular role the word refers to a more general case where the architecture entails the fundamental concepts and properties of an architecture entity. The following ...