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Architecture Body of Knowledge
Architecture Body of Knowledge
Architecture Body of Knowledge
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Architecture Body of Knowledge

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Imagine...unleashing your organization's potential, people knowing what must be done and empowered to do it, executing the right decisions the first time with predictable and desirable outcomes. Imagine...this is you! Opportunities through Discovery. Innovation by Design. What opportunities can you imagine?

The purpose of the Architecture Body of KnowledgeTM (ABoKTM) is to establish a common understanding of the terminology, principles, and best practices for automation solution design, development and delivery. Key elements to the ABoKTM include Governance, Principles, Technology Catalog, and Solutions. Simply said, ABoKTM is common sense put to words and diagrams, organized in a way that is pragmatic, useful, and intuitive. The most experienced architects appreciate models that crystalize the concepts they must convey, align teams toward achieving mission goals, and engender productive developers of rich solutions to complex business needs. Painful lessons learned in the software development industry are incorporated into our understanding of best practices. The ABoKTM accounts for the influences of individuals, paradigms, and movements important to the evolution of automation while unveiling the concepts and principles that are timeless. This body of knowledge integrates patterns (e.g., GoF), models (e.g., SEI CMMI, FEA, ITIL®), practices (e.g., PMI® PMBoK®, TOGAFTM, ITSM), and technologies (e.g., Java, .NETTM, EAI, Web Services), along with their applications to solving business and technical issues in automation development. Through broad inclusion of these aspects, ABoKTM puts forth a perspective that wouldn’t otherwise be evident to those practicing the architecture discipline. The scope of the ABoKTM encompasses multiple software development movements and levels of abstraction, including enterprise architectures, model-driven approaches, new developments in user experience design, pattern catalogs, and software frameworks available commercially and as open source. Design dimensions of software, information (motion and rest), interfaces, security, and performance are woven into the content.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherRon Bennett
Release dateAug 16, 2011
ISBN9781465948946
Architecture Body of Knowledge
Author

Ron Bennett

Over thirty years of technology development with more than a decade focused on consulting, concentrating in service-orientation, Object-oriented Java frameworks, software development methods, and their application to government and health care. Transformed legacy systems through service-enablement, development of model-driven application development approaches, and automation of those methods using IBM technologies.Designs yielded scalable case management systems supporting tens of thousands of users atop his frameworks reused in dozens of implementation. Piloted collaborative commerce and the integration of Portal, Orchestration, Human Task Management, and legacy applications using advanced tools and techniques. Systems architect for a large public assistance delivery platforms, child support incremental renewal, and health care medical systems projects. Designed software development processes and configured IBM Rational, Lotus, WebSphere, and Tivoli products for governance, modeling, development, verification, configuration and change management, deployment, securing and hosting complex automation solutions.Founder and President of Architunity® LLC, the leading professional service provider for discovery of architecture opportunities and delivery of innovation by design. Author of the lauded Architecture Body of KnowledgeTM (ABoKTM) available for sale. Delivers enterprise architecture, organizational governance, and product development services based upon this set of best practices mined from decades of experience.

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    Architecture Body of Knowledge - Ron Bennett

    Architecture Body of Knowledge™

    Ron Bennett

    Copyright © 2011 by Ron Bennett

    All rights reserved.

    Published by Architunity® LLC

    Smashwords Edition 1.0.5

    Architecture Body of Knowledge™ (ABoK™) are trademarks of Architunity® LLC

    Architunity is a registered trademark ® of Architunity® LLC

    Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

    The following standards, models, products, and organizations

    are referenced in or as examples

    Star Trek™ is a trademark of Paramount Studios

    Java™ and JavaFX™ are a trademarks of Oracle®

    Flex™ is a trademark of Adobe®

    Android™ is a trademark of Google®

    iOS Cocoa™, iPod™, iPhone™, and iPad™ are trademarks of Apple®

    MQSeries™ and Notes™ are trademarks of IBM®

    Quicken™ is a trademark of Intuit®

    Windows™, Office™, Visual Studio™, Visual C++™, J++™, C#™, Visual Basic™, BizTalk™ and .NET™ are trademarks of Microsoft®

    PMI® PMBoK® are registered trademarks for the Project Management Institute

    TOGAF® is a registered trademark of The Open Group

    ITIL® is a registered trademark with Office of Government Commerce

    RUP® is a registered trademark for IBM®

    Magic Quadrant™ is a trademark of Gartner®

    Wave™ is a trademark of Forrester®

    Apple® is a registered trademark of Apple®

    Adobe® is a registered trademark of Adobe®

    Intuit® is a registered trademark of Intuit®

    Google® is a registered trademark of Google®

    Oracle® is a registered trademark of Oracle®

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    Software AG® is a registered trademark of Software AG®

    SAP® is a registered trademark of SAP®

    Gartner® is a registered trademark of Gartner®

    Forrester® is a registered trademark of Forrester®

    This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not liable for any errors, omissions, or changes due to technology evolution. Due to the volatility of the subject matter, references and citations are rarely provided. Updates to the contained materials occur when the publisher determines such updates are warranted. Although the publisher intends that the materials may be applied to any organization with successful results, this publication is not a substitute for professional services where consultants tailor the contents for an organization, adjusting terminology, cultural context, and processes based upon their core competencies and practices.

    This material is published as an electronic publication only.

    Best viewed in portrait, small text, single column, white background, color display.

    Preface

    Intent of the Architecture Body of Knowledge™

    Imagine...

    ...Unleashing your organization's potential.

    ...People knowing what must be done and empowered to do it.

    ...Executing the right decisions the first time with predictable and desirable outcomes.

    ...This is You!

    Opportunities through Discovery

    Innovation by Design

    What opportunities can you imagine?

    The purpose of the Architecture Body of Knowledge™ (ABoK™) is to establish a common understanding of the terminology, principles, and best practices for automation solution design, development and delivery. Key elements to the ABoK™ included:

    Governance

    Principles

    Technology Catalog

    Solutions

    Simply said, ABoK™ is common sense put to words and diagrams, organized in a way that is pragmatic, useful, and intuitive. The most experienced architects appreciate models that crystalize the concepts they must convey, align teams toward achieving mission goals, and engender productive developers of rich solutions to complex business needs. And you may have noticed everyone wants to be an architect.

    This body of knowledge is the essentials of architecture, not a collection of utopian ideals nor a philosophic discussion from Greek antiquity. There are many architecture practices, certification programs, books, and processes that fall under their own weight, cost, and lack of value. Unfortunately for the automation community, there are many self-proclaimed standards leading to no consensus or de facto standard in articulating an architecture. But there are concepts in common to them all. It is on this foundation that ABoK™ is built.

    Painful lessons learned in the software development industry are incorporated into our understanding of best practices. The ABoK™ accounts for the influences of individuals, paradigms, and movements important to the evolution of automation while unveiling the concepts and principles that are timeless. This body of knowledge integrates patterns (e.g., GoF), models (e.g., SEI CMMI, FEA, ITIL®), practices (e.g., PMI® PMBoK®, TOGAF®, ITSM), and technologies (e.g., Java, .NET™, EAI, Web Services), along with their applications to solving business and technical issues in automation development. Through broad inclusion of these aspects, ABoK™ puts forth a perspective that wouldn’t otherwise be evident to those practicing the architecture discipline.

    The scope of the ABoK™ encompasses multiple software development movements and levels of abstraction, including enterprise architectures, model-driven approaches, new developments in user experience design, pattern catalogs, and software frameworks available commercially and as open source. Design dimensions of software, information (motion and rest), interfaces, security, and performance are woven into the content.

    Comments and, suggestions are welcome at the Architecture Body of Knowledge™ (ABoK™) and the Founder’s Blog.

    About the Founder

    Ron Bennett is a senior professional services consultant with over thirty years of technology development experience. He began his career modeling complex weather systems on a CRAY supercomputer and studying solar weather effects on Earth. While in the US Navy Submarine Force, LT Bennett qualified nuclear engineer, master training specialist, and initiated a quality management board for the advancement of network technology. He continued programming on DEC PDP 11/60, HP 2000, IBM 360, AIX, Solaris, Linux, and Windows platforms in a multitude of languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, PL/1, Natural, Basic, Visual Basic, C/C++, and Java. As an application and enterprise architect, he was instrumental in strategic development, methodology enablement, project management, requirements modeling, analysis and design, implementation, testing, deployments, technical management, and quality control. He used, improved, and authored approaches to software development, including structured analysis (waterfall), several object oriented methods (e.g., Rational Unified Process; RUP®, Agile methods; Rapid Application Development), and Business Process Modeling (BPM).

    In the mid 1990’s, Mr. Bennett lead mergers and acquisitions for the business automation division of a major legal publishing company, authoring conversion processes with standardized interfaces that enabled reuse for years. He solved complex customer match/merge and address hygiene issues, modernized legacy ADABAS applications into client-server and Web technologies, and designed new customer relationship management automation.

    Working at a major healthcare plan as an enterprise architect, he set strategic direction for the provider management, claims processing, member management, and benefit engineering lines of business. He also led the technical development of an SAP R/3 financial and human resources implementation, including the construction of a time accounting Java applet that communicated with SAP Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPI).

    In 2000, he pioneered service oriented architecture through a common service layer that connected multiple channels (e.g., Web, IVR, CRM) to several legacy applications implemented in legacy technologies through a messaging bus. This was later evolved into a collaborative commerce framework.

    Within a year, his designs with enterprise Java patterns were implemented using the RUP® method in large scale public assistance case management systems (Title IV-A) now serving tens of thousands of users and millions of recipients for some of the largest states in the United States. These applications include advanced frameworks, code generation, a persistent screen flow driver, custom rules engine, along with database referential and temporal integrity. In 2004, a major state welfare agency asked him to pilot new service oriented technologies as extensions to this core system by introducing a Portal, BPEL Orchestration, Enterprise Service Bus, and a new Web Service layer. He then lead service enablement of Java applications to open processing logic up for multiple channel integration, including new Web self-service, contact center applications, IVR, document imaging, and FAX.

    At another state agency, Mr. Bennett adopted a modified iterative waterfall methodology to a top-down BPM approach that included enterprise and service governance processes, modeling traceability through requirements and testing artifacts, service contract and implementation design, frameworks development, and build factory construction techniques, all to enable an incremental renewal of a complex child support system (Title IV-D). The methods included the aspects of business domain, process, technology, program management, and operational governance with assets that defined plans, templates, standards & guidelines. Tools guides tailored vendor products to the methodology and automated development processes, such as publishing service contracts to a registry and deployment service implementations to hosted environments.

    Mr. Bennett’s pragmatic and successful approach to product development and delivery was applied in many critical situations where organization objectives fell short, leading to desirable outcomes and significant return on investment. In a prominent health care sciences company, he turned around a failed implementation of a Web application that employed BPEL human task management and asynchronous bulk processing into a model platform for future application development in just 3 months. His work integrating process orchestration, electronic content management, Rich Internet Applications, and advanced enterprise service locator services put a financial services engagement back on track after slipping go-live dates twice. Much of Mr. Bennett’s work leveraged new Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools for requirements development, configuration management, change management, and activity tracking. Applying tools appropriately, automating development processes, along with enabling transparency and collaboration on projects were key success factors to righting engagements that were listing.

    Strategic development of an organization’s mission, goals, vision for achievement, and following through with realization are Mr. Bennett’s passion. In his over thirty years of technology work, he implemented some of the first network systems in highly classified Department of Defense environments, including submarines. He leads a large state in advanced out-of-the-box discussions regarding Health Care Reform, applying extensive domain experience with multi-channel real-time eligibility determination, enrollment, claims adjudication, provider management, actuarial risk assessments, benefit engineering, analytical performance monitoring, and legislation. Participation with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Medicaid Information Technical Architecture (MITA) project and vendors delivering MITA solutions, delivery of eligibility, enrollment, and Medicaid claims adjudication solutions, along with experience working for private health care plans, science, manufacturing, and distributor companies, endows Mr. Bennett the breadth and depth necessary to solve the most challenging strategic problems any health care or public sector organization may face.

    The Architecture Body of Knowledge™ encapsulates many years of lessons learned, experience with technology evolution, analysis of industry trends, and understanding of how technology can solve some of the most complex organizational needs. Mr. Bennett’s background with many industries, technologies, proposals, contracting models, design constraints, and development approaches is distinct, enabling him to share this body of important terms, concepts, principles, best practices, patterns, processes, and solutions that are successful, repeatable, useful, and desirable. These practices turn organizations that manage by crisis into well-oiled machines that achieve predictable outcomes.

    To establish a vehicle for the delivery of ABoK™, Mr. Bennett founded the consulting company Architunity® LLC in 2011. This organization promotes the appropriate use of technology in our society. Mr. Bennett is also a Project Management Professional (PMP) certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and holds a Bachelors of Arts in Physics with an interdisciplinary in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

    As an author, Mr. Bennett published many white papers, Points of View, and educational materials for firms, vendors, and clients. His presentations include national conferences, such as the CMS MMIS, and vendor road shows. Mr. Bennett is straight forward in his approach and never obfuscates his point with mellifluous marketing terms.

    In his infinite amount of spare time (resulting from temporal displacement wakes), he enjoys everything Star Trek™ and quality time with his wife, two daughters, and son. Mr. Bennett lived in California, Minnesota, Colorado, Rhode Island, Florida, Connecticut, Virginia, and Texas. His travels consulting included most of the United States of America. He still dabbles with Astronomy, specifically solar physics, and approaches everything with a spirit of discovery.

    Architunity® LLC Mission

    The ABoK™ is governed by Architunity® LLC, an organization formed for just such a purpose. There are no memberships, certifications, fees, or formal protocols to participate. This body of knowledge complements, integrates, and enhances understanding of other products, programs, and books dedicated toward the automation industry. ABoK™ captures what works best and evolves through open exchanges of ideas, information, and analysis.

    The mission of Architunity® LLC is to lower the barriers to effective architecture programs in organizations of any size. ABoK™ is distributed as an eBook for a nominal fee and can be leveraged in an organization without high priced consultants. It is with that intent that a zero cost community is made available at http://www.ArchitectureBoK.com. Organizations and their architectural leaders are free to collaborate on their governance challenges, success stories, and architectural opportunities.

    Should an organization want a kick-start, founder and president of Architunity® LLC offers two professional services that set ABoK™ into motion: ABoK™ Adoption℠ and ABoK™ Action℠. The first establishes the governance bodies and processes that are the necessary foundation for achieving mission goals and driving value. The second institutionalizes ABoK™ best practices by nurturing the governance bodies through delivery of their governance artifacts. Whereas, professional services are not required to adopt and appropriately use ABoK™, these services improve on a potentially huge return for a very small investment.

    Table of Contents

    Preface

    About the Founder

    Architunity® LLC Mission

    1. INTRODUCTION

    1.1. Document Structure

    1.2. Influences

    1.3. Notation

    1.4. Terms

    2. GOVERNANCE

    2.1. Governance Areas

    2.2. Governance Processes

    3. PRINCIPLES

    3.1. Domain

    3.2. Program

    3.3. Process

    3.4. Technology

    3.5. Operations

    4. TECHNOLOGY CATALOG

    4.1. User Experience Service Area

    4.2. Application Service Area

    4.3. Information Service Area

    4.4. Middleware Service Area

    4.5. Platform Service Area

    4.6. Network Service Area

    4.7. Security Service Area

    4.8. Management Service Area

    5. SOLUTIONS

    5.1. Domain Patterns

    5.2. Program Patterns

    5.3. Process Patterns

    5.4. Technology Patterns

    5.5. Operations Patterns

    APPENDIX

    Glossary

    Assets

    1.Introduction

    This body of knowledge defines how to design infrastructure supporting automated systems. The ABoK™ is a repository of roles, governance processes, methods, principles, technology elements, and patterned solutions that describe, guide, and constrain the design of information systems to follow the best practices of industry leading practices, models, processes, and techniques. It is a template and an abstraction for an Enterprise Architecture while encapsulating other aspects related to architecture design harvested from decades of experience, documented successes, and vendor tools.

    An adaptive architecture not only meets functional and non-functional requirements discovered before design, it accounts for the changes users will eventually ask for. The architect’s role is to design agility into solutions at a reasonable cost. To realize these objectives:

    The Architecture Body of Knowledge™ is standards-based, service-aligned, and market-driven.

    Basing systems on industry standards with broad market support yields greater longevity. Even so, standards evolve quickly and market support sways with emerging advances. Modularized architectures allow for the removal and replacement of technologies as domain and architecture opportunities arise, or when components age toward sunset. Service composition encourages reuse and permits organic software extensions. These principle concepts are central to an adaptive architecture and agile organization.

    The ABoK™ is divided into four primary sections. Governance comprises the first section since architectures are created from the vision, requirements, and constraints of a broader organization. Effective designs are created in the context of governance processes, described in artifacts following notation standards, and delivered to meet the objectives of several perspectives, including owner, user, and developer. Domain strategies and drivers, along with industry trends and proven best engineering practices surrender a set of architecture principles in the second section.

    Many technologies are complex and difficult to understand. The ABoK™ provides a third section that logically catalogs technologies into service areas with their services, components, standards, and products. Evolution of the architecture is accounted for in this section by aligning the technology catalog to architecture governance processes. This provides architects a common language to discuss issues related to their designs while inventorying the standards and implementations available for reuse. Finally, solutions are assembled from these building block technologies in new and innovative ways. Based upon architecture principles and domain automation requirements, models that detail automated component interactions declare reusable solutions called patterns and codified into frameworks. Architecture scenarios inject technology components into domain work flow and express the dynamics within the design.

    To help govern change across the lifecycle of architectures, the ABoK™ establishes an approach organized into governance, architectures, methods, assets, and controls. It is based upon industry practices and models from the PMI®, SEI, and federal governments. PMI® PMBoK®, FEA, TOGAF®, ALM, ITIL®, and ITSM are complementary to this body of knowledge and incorporated as building blocks.

    Several elements of ABoK™ are intended as a starting place and not an end product. Much of the content is geared toward development of organizational governance that enables the creation and management of visions, processes, operations and supporting Enterprise Architecture. The most effective means to apply this body of knowledge is to tailor its contents with the organization’s goals, culture, terminology, and structure. A lean project then establishes the governance and automation processes of the ABoK™ Approach. As the organization measured improved successes in value creation and delivery, these practices are adopted and institutionalized, unleashing the organization’s full potential.

    1.1.Document Structure

    The structure that follows decidedly separates governance, principles, the technology catalog, and solutions. Governance addresses the dimensions, perspectives, areas, bodies, and processes needed to create and manage an architecture, including domain organization structure, processes, performance monitoring, business intelligence, information structures for data at rest and in motion, service contracts, implementation technologies, deployment models, roles, responsibilities, methodologies and processes, along with tools that automate product development, delivery, and change management. It is called the ABoK™ Approach and spans the board room down through small project teams.

    Principles are timeless and enable solid, consistent architecture decisions that produce predictable and desirable outcomes. Without rock steady principles, automation becomes a sea of quicksand absorbing the organization and its mission. Wavering and changing decisions results in constant refactoring, high investment costs for product delivery, and integration complexities that are compromised for deadlines. Organizations must articulate their deeply held beliefs in technology standards, rationalize them against industry trends, and synthesize a set of principles that they can base their decisions. Imagine making the right decision the first time. ABoK™ provides architecture principles and a framework to tailor in those important to each organization.

    Communication requires a language, even in automation development. The technology catalog is a common set of terms used to express architectures. It defines the Architecture Definition Language (ADL) of ABoK™, organizing the building blocks of solutions into store shelves where architects may find what they are looking for. With this simple, mutually exclusive model of service areas, services, components, standards, and vendor products, an Enterprise Architect is given a tool to express what technologies are available to their organization, how they should be used, what is planned for their future (e.g., emerging, sunset), and any constraints that should be observed. A common application of the catalog is for product selection when a build vs. buy decision must be made. Industry standards (e.g., de facto, open, proprietary) are selected first and mapped to the catalog’s logical services. Components that must be deployed are selected based upon standards and describe partitioning, dependencies, and how non-functional requirements can be realized. Custom solutions and vendor products may then be compared against the features of the logical service model, standards, components, and performance characteristics designed from the technology catalog.

    Assembly of technology catalog components into something that provides a useful product constitutes a service. Modeling common reusable patterns and frameworks is accomplished by the solution chapter, at different levels of abstraction. Moreover, the elements of governance may be assembled into patterns for managing domains, program portfolio, methodologies, and operations; rather than just the architecture, software design, class libraries, and frameworks of technology solutions. This chapter is rich with the product development and delivery solutions that unleash an organization’s true potential.

    The ABoK™ is multiple dimensional. In addition to chapters, there are areas of concern that address what the organization wants to accomplish and how it operates (Domain), how initiatives, programs, and projects are managed (Program), the approaches and methods used to accomplish organization goals (Process), how automation is employed (Technology), and the environments that host automation components (Operations). A pattern of these five areas are evident in the table of contents. These areas are applied to governance, principles, and solutions to organize and relate content across chapters. Governance bodies follow governance processes to address these areas. Principles for each area guide governance decisions. The solutions chapter is full of patterns that address common problems for each these areas and are founded on each their principles.

    An approach to delivering architectural excellence is founded upon industry standards, a vision for the organization defined by principles and solution patterns, along with best practice methods, assets, and controls.

    The PMI® PMBoK® process groups wrap the ABoK™ areas and their dimensions as shown in the diagram above and described in the table below.

    Governance processes specified in the ABoK™ control how the principles, technology catalog, and solutions may evolve. It is the responsibility of the Enterprise Architecture Review Board (EARB) and Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG) to champion ABoK™ objectives, ensuring the Enterprise Architecture is properly maintained, communicated, and most importantly – used.

    1.2.Influences

    Architecture should be recognized as a product, whether a design or the infrastructure that results. The product development lifecycle is the context in which ABoK™ helps define an Enterprise Architecture and the automation components delivering technology value to the organization. As a product and a vehicle for delivery of products, industry goals, best practices, models, and standards are applied by ABoK™ to govern the creation of ideas, understanding of change, along with the steps to deliver and operate automation.

    Multiple accepted concepts are

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