Guideline: Identify Common Architectural Mechanisms
Many architectural mechanisms have common characteristics that can be used to quickly identify mechanisms that are useful in defining the system.
Relationships
Related Elements
Main Description
Architectural Mechanism Description
Availability The percentage of time that the system must be available for use, including planned outages.
Archiving Provides a means to move data from active storage when it has reached a specific state.
Auditing Provides audit trails of system execution.
Communication A mechanism for handling inter-process communication.
Debugging Provides elements to support application debugging.
Disaster Recovery Provides facilities to recover systems, application, data and networks.
Error Management Allows errors to be detected, propagated, and reported.
Event Management Supports the use of asynchronous events within a system.
Graphics Supports user interface services, such as 3D rendering.
Information Exchange Supports information interchange across technical and organizational boundaries with appropriate semantic and format translations.
Licensing Provides services for acquiring, installing, tracking, and monitoring license usage. Might be required as part of authorizing corporate bodies.
Localization / Internationalization Provides facilities for supporting multiple human languages and rendering the language preferred by the user.
Mail Services that allow applications to send and receive electronic mail.
Mega-data Support for handling very large amounts of data.
Memory Management Services for abstracting how memory is allocated and freed.
Meta-data Supports the runtime introspection of components and data.
Online help Provides online help capability
Persistence Services to handle the reading and writing of stored data.
Printing Provides facilities for interfacing with printers.
Process Management Provides support for the management of processes and threads.
Reporting Provides flexible reporting facilities
Resource Management Provides support for the management of expensive resources, such as database connections.
Scheduling Provides the ability to execute tasks at a specified time.
Security Provides services to protect access to certain resources or information.
System Management Services that facilitate management of applications in an operational environment.
Time Services to synchronize time on a network, and to translate times into different time zones.
Transaction Management A mechanism for handling ACID transactions.
Workflow Support for the movement of documents and other items of work, typically through an organization.