Analysis Mechanisms for Eliciting Architecturally Significant Requirements

Name: Analysis Mechanisms for Eliciting Architecturally Significant Requirements
Type: Rule
Status: final
Version: 2007-12-06
Source: Peter Eeles, Senior Architect, IBM, 2004, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/4706.html

Gist: to provide a checklist of analysis mechanisms that can be used in order to find out about requirements that will be significant to the achitect.
Analysis mechanism DEFINED AS implementation-independent solution to a problem

R1: 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. ' The acronym ACID refers to four characteristics of a transaction: Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable.
Workflow - Support for the movement of documents and other items of work, typically through an organization.