Blog
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01 Nov
Welcome to our New Website
Welcome to the new website for Edition 2 of Software Systems Architecture!
Edition 2 was published in November 2011 and is a major revision of the original book. We have updated most of the chapters and added over 130 pages of additional content. The most important changes in this edition are as follows.
- We have introduced a new viewpoint, which we call the Context viewpoint. This describes the relationships, dependencies, and interactions between the system and its environment (the people, systems, and external entities with which it interacts). It extends, formalizes, and standardizes the relatively brief discussion of scope and context that used to be in Chapter 8.
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12 Feb
Survey of Architecture Frameworks
Rich Hilliard is one of the people behind the ISO 42010 architectural standard (the international revision of IEEE 1471). He runs a website for the standard, which has a lot of material about architecture frameworks, standardisation and taxonomies.
One of the most useful pages is a Survey of Architecture Frameworks. Rich and his colleagues have collected information on a wide range of architectural frameworks from industry and academia. Ours is there, of course (!) along with well-known frameworks such as TOGAF and Phillippe Kruchten’s original 4+1, but there are many others as well. The frameworks are described and categorised, and there are links to source websites where available.
If you find that our viewpoint taxonomy doesn’t give you all the coverage you need, or would just like to find out how other authors and organisations approach the subject, this is a great place to start.
Alternatively, if you know of any frameworks which aren’t mentioned (I am about to email Rich about CapGemini’s IAF framework for example) you can email Rich through the website.
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12 Feb
Eoin and Nick Interviewed on InfoQ
You can see a short interview that InfoQ did with Eoin and me on our new book here.
In the interview we talk about the motivation behind the first edition of the book, and the rationale for some of the changes we made for the second edition (for example, adding the Context viewpoint). We also discuss architecture in the context of some of the “hot” topics for InfoQ readers such as cloud computing and agile development.
If you’ve never heard of InfoQ before, it’s a great online resource: “… InfoQ.com (Information Queue) is an independent online community focused on change and innovation in enterprise software development, targeted primarily at the technical architect, technical team lead (senior developer), and project manager. InfoQ serves the Java, .NET, Ruby, SOA, and Agile communities with daily news written by domain experts, articles, video interviews, video conference presentations, and mini-books.” They also help organise the QCon conferences in London and New York.
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15 Nov
Updated Templates and Quick Reference Card
Eoin and I have updated the AD template and Quick Reference Card to reflect the changes we made for Edition 2.
If you’ve downloaded any of these documents recently, please download them again to get the revised versions. All comments welcome!