A Field Guide to Boxology: Preliminary Classification of Architectural Styles for Software Systems

Authors: Mary Shaw and Paul Clements

Proc. COMPSAC97, 21st Int'l Computer Software and Applications Conference, August 1997, pp. 6-13. Preliminary version, "Toward Boxology: Preliminary Classification of Architectural Styles," Proc. Second Int'l Software Architecture Workshop, October 1996.

Paper appears in two files:

Download the Postscript text file and the Postscript table file.

Or, download the PDF text file and PDF table file.

Abstract

Software architects use a number of commonly-recognized "styles" to guide their design of system structures. Each of these is appropriate for some classes of problems, but none is suitable for all problems. How, then, does a software designer choose an architecture suitable for the problem at hand? Two kinds of information are required: (1) careful discrimination among the candidate architectures and (2) design guidance on how to make appropriate choices. Here we support careful discrimination with preliminary classification of styles. We use a two-dimensional classification strategy with control and data issues as the dominant organizing axes. We position the major styles within this space and use finer-grained discriminations to elaborate variations on the styles. This provides a framework for organizing design guidance, which we partially flesh out with rules of thumb.


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