Re: [soa-rm-ra] Cogitating Descriptions for Reference Architecture and System

["Jeffrey A. Estefan" <jeffrey.a.estefan@jpl.nasa.gov>]

Colleagues,

Couple of points:

1) Suggest we do not attempt re-define the nomenclature specified by the 
ANSI/IEEE 1471 Std.  Our objective is to adopt to concept of architectural 
descriptions (ADs) and use of views and viewpoints to describe our Reference 
Architecture, not to recast the Std into something else.

2) I would like to offer the following opening sentence for the What is a 
Reference Architecture section (Section 1.1):

"A reference architecture models the abstract architectural elements in the 
domain independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are 
used to implement the domain."

Our entire industry doesn't have a good industry-standard definition for 
"reference architecture" and it is one of the most misused terms in use 
today.  The definition offered above, while deviating from the lexicon 
provided in the SOA-RM, is consistent with the sentence that follows, which 
defines the essence of a reference model and I believe more closely captures 
the spirit of the spec we are writing---which is indeed about architectural 
models my friends!

Cheers...

 - Jeff E., JPL