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Appendix A: Analysis Mechanisms

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Level: Introductory

Peter Eeles, Senior IT Architect, IBM

30 Apr 2004

from The Rational Edge: Appendix A for the article "Capturing Architectural Requirements," at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/4706.html

From "Capturing Architectural Requirements"

Consider the following analysis mechanisms when gathering architectural requirements.

Analysis Mechanism	Description
Auditing	Provides audit trails of system execution.
Communication	Allows distributed processes to communicate.
Debugging	Provides elements to support application debugging.
Error Management	Allows errors to be detected, propagated, and reported.
Event Management	Supports the use of asynchronous messages within a system.
File Management	Provides services for accessing a file system.
Graphics	Supports user interface services, such as 3D rendering.
Information Exchange	Supports data format conversion.
Licensing	Provides services for acquiring, installing, tracking, and monitoring license usage.
Localization	Provides facilities for supporting multiple human languages.
Mail	Services that allow applications to send and receive mail.
Mega-data	Support for handling large amounts of data in a client-server environment.
Memory Management	Services for abstracting how memory is allocated and freed.
Meta-data	Supports the runtime introspection of components.
Online help	Provides online help capability.
Persistence	Services to manipulate persistent data.
Printing	Provides facilities for printing.
Process Management	Provides support for the management of processes and threads.
Reporting	Provides reporting facilities.
Resource Management	Provides support for the management of expensive resources, such as database connections. Provides support for the management of expensive resources, such as database connections.
Scheduling	Provides scheduling capability.
Security	Provides services to protect access to certain resources or information.
System Management	Services that facilitate management of applications in a distributed environment.
Time	Services to synchronize time on a network, and to translate times into different time zones.
Transaction Management	A mechanism for handling ACID ¹ transactions.
Workflow	Support for the movement of documents and other items of work, typically through an organization.

¹ The acronym ACID refers to four characteristics of a transaction: Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable.

About the author

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Peter Eeles has over 15 years experience developing software solutions, and has spent the majority of this time architecting and implementing large-scale distributed systems, culminating in the writing of his first book entitled Building Business Objects (John Wiley and Sons). Peter works as a Process Consultant for IBM Rational (UK), and is the Rational Architecture Practice representative for Northern Europe. In his spare time, Peter enjoys bike racing and playing jazz guitar, although not at the same time.

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