As an initial discussion which can be helpful to all of us I would like to hear opinions of my colleagues regarding the basic question of just what is Architecture and what we would like it to be in the future.

Regards,

Behzad

Architecture....according to me is a blue-print of a product. Caring less about the technology involved to convert the blue-print takes virtual form, all it does is dictates how the system should be implemented.

-S

I we ask 100 architects what architecture is, we will get close to 100 answers. Several well-known architects and organizations defines architecture in the lines of ??rchitecture is about the structure of things that are important and hard to change, their components, and how the components fit and work together to fulfil some purpose??/font>

Yes it is a very helpful discussion that will define what we are doing! J

There is more than one architecture e.g. hardware, software. It is also important to distinguish between architecture as a description of a domain and architecture as a design process.

From the software perspective the analyst role defines the business requirements of the solution, the designer / architect role determines how those requirements will be delivered. In this case the architect selects the most appropriate technologies for the job and specifies the interactions between them.

Architecture is the blue-print of the solution / product / system. This gives a bird's eye view of the system. This takes business form / technical form based on the architecture we provide. This is mainly to convey what the system will contain and provide. It talks about functional, non-functional, perspective. And also takes care of certain specific attributes (like performance) at the early stage rather than later and by that saves effort in building the right solution.

There are different architectures we can talk about, like: Business Architecture, Logical Architecture, Technical Architecture, Deployment Architecture, Information Architecture, Security Architectgure, Software Architecture, etc. - each one focuses on one perspective and the ultimate goal is to provide what the system contain and provide. We can talk in long for architectures.

This forms the basis for the design as well. Architecture provides the scope for each of the above. There are reference architectures and architectural patterns that we can use.

You canbring up the any of the topic in architecture so that we can discuss further.