Tachometry Corporation
During the analysis and design of a custom application, we produce a number of important documentation deliverables. The Systems Architecture Document (SAD) is a critical link between the business requirements and the technical implementation. A typical Systems Architecture consists of five views:
- Use Case View
- Logical View
- Process/Deployment View
- Implementation View
- Data View
These views are presented using the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
The Use Case View describes the architecturally significant requirements for the application. It contains the Use Case model and Use Cases. The architecturally significant Use Cases provide a functional summary of the key business requirements. It also includes any Change Cases that have been identified to ensure that the architecture is flexible enough to support future requirements.
The Logical View addresses the subsystems / packages that will comprise the solution. It includes a description of the architecturally significant subsystems / packages and their responsibilities, a package dependency diagram showing the relationships between architecturally significant portions of the solution, and the architecturally significant parts of the design model.
The Process/Deployment View illustrates where processing takes place, the flow of processing, and describes the system's decomposition into processes (single threads of control) and nodes (logical platforms). It is organized by groups of processes that communicate or interact and describes the main modes of communication between processes. Where applicable, it includes configurations on which the software is deployed and run,mapping the processes to a physical hardware and network environment.
The Implementation View describes the overall structure of the implementation model. Specifications for major software components are documented in this section.
The Data View describes the schema and location where data will reside, noting the persistence mechanisms that will be used by the system.