References to other resources on the Web
This is a list of other Web resources that deal with subjects of interest to information architects. This list is maintained and updated as we become aware of other sites.
[Example Architectures] [Supporting Technologies] [Researchers and Writers]
[Papers on Architecture] [Other Interesting Sites] [Books on Architecture] [Conferences]
Example Architectures
- CALS is an overall information architecture for
cooperation throughout the defense industry.
A good list of information on CALS efforts is maintained by NTT
- The Department of Energy's Information Architecture
- This program has been underway since 1995. As you can see the target architecture functionality has taken 2 1/2 years
- CALS is an overall information architecture for
cooperation throughout the defense industry.
From
- DISA — The Defense Information System Agency
- DISA has a number of large system engineering programs with a strong architectureal content such as the Defense Information Infrastructure–Common Operating Environment and Global Command and Control Systems
- Evolutionary Design of Complex Systems
- A DARPA program that is looking at reducing the cost of maintaining systems as a strategy for extending the life of military platforms such as mainframes. Still in its formative stages the program has attracted an interesting range of projects that target areas that should be interesting to anyone responsible for maintaining mission critical systems in corporations.
- The San Francisco Project
- This is an IBM project that is setting out to create standardised business objects to be used by third party software houses developing vertical-industry products. The project is using Java to support platform independence. For a good summary of the project see "IBM's San Francisco Project" a report by D.H. Andrews group.
- SIS2000 — The University of Arizona
- A discussion of the model for the new administrative systems at a large state university
- The Petroleum Open Software Corporation
- A not for profit consortium that looks at issues of data sharing in the petroleum industry. At this site you will find an overview of the Epicentre Logical Data Model.
http://www.august.com/epicentreis a nice beta viewer of the epicentre entity hierachy.
- MIA (Multivendor Integration Architecture)
- MIA was a program of NTT to ensure inteoperability across vendors products. Most of the material on the web about MIA is in Japanese.
Suporting Technologies
- Business Objects
- Sponsored by the Object Managment Group Business Objects Task Force is seeking to promote the interoperation of objects representing business processes. If you want more information try the OOPSLA96 Business Object Workshop home page. TI have an 80 page response (PDF format) to the Businees Objects RFI.
- Information Systems Effectiveness
- A model for investigating the effectiveness of an organization's use of Information Systems.
- Guidelines for technical requirements for a Parallel Processing or clustered environment
- A set of guidelines for systems to run in the Nero environment at the University of Oregon. Include the use of self defining data format (SDDF) to capture and share event logs.
- Records Management
- The Department of Energy have a list of sites that have infomation on records management stanards and procedures. The DOE has a strong interest in this area being under various prohibitions on destroying historic and scientific documents.
- The Pablo Self-Defining Data Format
- A data meta format including data record structures and data record instances
Researchers and Writers
- Mark Maier
- Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Universtity of Alabama at Huntsville. Teaches courses in software engineering; does research in digital stereo video compression and processing and signal processing for communmications and radar.
- James Teng
- Associate professor at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Teng has written extensively on "information architecture" defined as data architecture. Dr. teng is one of the editors of the Information Effectiveness page maintained by faculty at UofSC.
- John A. Zachman
- John Zachman is one of the developers of IBM's BSP metodology and the father of information systems architecture
Papers on Architecture
- The End of Objects and the Last Programmer
- a paper by Grady
Booch that discusses the direction of the
software industry and the true value of
architectures
- What is Architectural Software Development
- a paper by Larry Best of AMS
Other Interesting Sites
- Lockheed
Idaho Technologies Company
- describes their Information Architecture Strategy Project
- The Pattern Repository
- is a site devoted to the use of Patterns and Pattern languages in software design.
Books of Interest
[All the remarks here are the personal comments of Jon Blunt unless otherwise attributed.]
- Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models by Martin Fowler, ISBN -0-201-89542-0
- This is an excellent partner to the Design Patterns book. Fowler presents a series of patterns that present the essence of good domain modelling practices. The examples are based on models developed on real projects for paying clients, yet Fowler is able to talk about the abstract problems that are being addressed in a way that shows how the pattern he is describing will be relevant in many domains. That said it is not clear that the terminology in this book will enter the lexicon in quite the way the patterns of the GoF have.
Art of Strategic Planning for Information Technology by Bernard H. Boar
- The Art of Systems Architecting by Eberhardt Rechtin & Mark W. Maier
ISBN 0-8493-7836-2- This book picks up where Systems Architecting finished. In comparison this book has a much richer set of models and talks more directly to the issues of large scale software engineering.
The Blueprint for Business Objects by Peter Fingar
Building Enterprise Information Architecture: Reengineering Information Systems by Melissa Cook
- Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought by David Hay Dover House ISBN 0-932633-29-3
- David Hay presents avery rich view of abstract data modeling. His strong emphasis on abstracting types gets him very close to models that derive from the object paradigm. It is interesting to compare the models in this book with those in Fowler's book. My only hesitation is that this book presents a level of conceptualization that goes many steps beyond what is typical of data modellers.
- Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides Addison Wesley
ISBN 0-201-63361-2- This is the most quoted book on software patterns and is trhe text that legitamized the concept. Strongly anchored in OOP Gamma et al (often refered to as the Gang of Four, or GOF for short) show how problems that appear repeatedly in design can be addressed by distributing responsibility across cooperating objects. Most of the examples in the book are from C++ and some of the patterns are addressing specific issues in that family of languages.
- Practical Steps for Aligning Information Technology with Business Strategies by Bernard H. Boar
- I cannot say that I enthuse about this book. Boar's treatment of the existing Information Architecture models is provocative. I tend to agree with him about the lack of intellectual rigor they present. His proposed model however is a very complex diagramming process that I feel becomes an obstacle to understanding the issues he presents.
- The presentation of the alignment issues themselves is stronger. The writer makes a strong case for not ignoring the managment and reward system for IS in solving this puzzle.
- Pattern Languages of Program Design, edited by James O. Coplien and Douglas C. Schmidt
ISBN 0-201-60734-4- Based on papers presented at the first conference of Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP) which took place in 1994.
- A System of Patterns by Frank Buschmann, Regine Meunier, Hans Rohnert, Peter Sommerlad and Michael Stal
ISBN 0-471-95869-7- Pattern-oriented software architecture for large scale systems. This book attempts to do for systems what Gamma et al. do for components and interfaces. Unfortunately for me something gets lost. The material here seems less to be patterns than archetypes. I think it is a question of scale. Just reading the GoF book I can immediately see that the issues addressed in that book will occur on almost any system. With A System of Patterns, it is interesting to know what a Blackboard system is, but maybe I will never work on a system that needs that technique.
- The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander, OUP, ISBN 0-19-502402-8
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, OUP- The books that started the whole pattern movement. These books describe Alexander's view of the principles upon which architecture and regional planning should be based. A Pattern Language is interesting because it describes a hierachy of patterns that cover magnitudes of scope from regional planning to room design. Nothing in the software pattern space yet approaches the audacity of this.
Conferences
- INCOSE '96 Symposium
- The Sixth Annual Symposium of the International Conference of System Engineering was in Boston in July 96 with a one day Tutorial on System Architecting on July 8th.
- This year's symposium is in Los Angeles in August. Progran details can be found at http://www.trw.com/incose/
INCOSE '98 Symposium will be in Vancouver, Britsh Columbia.
- OOPSLA
-