Industrial Case Study Ibm

12 Industrial Case Study: Architectural

Knowledge in an SOA Infrastructure Reference

Architecture

By Olaf Zimmermann, Petra Kopp, and Stefan Pappe © 2009, IBM Corporation.

In this chapter, we present an industrial case study for the creation and usage of

architectural knowledge.

To establish the context of our usage of architectural knowledge, we introduce

business domain, service portfolio, and knowledge management approach of the

company involved in the case in a first section. In this first section, we briefly review

general architectural concepts such as viewpoints, methods, and reference

architectures. Not all of these concepts pertain to architectural knowledge explicitly;

however, they helped us to create and leverage such knowledge successfully.

An understanding of our usage of these concepts helps to appreciate the central

role of architectural knowledge in the case. As a reader who is familiar with these

concepts and is primarily interested in our usage of architectural knowledge, as

opposed to its context in the case, you may want to skip this first section.

Next, we introduce a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure reference

architecture as a primary carrier of architectural knowledge in this company.

Moreover, we present how we harvested architectural knowledge from industry

projects to create this reference architecture. We also present feedback from early

reference architecture users. Finally, we conclude and give an outlook to future

work.

12.1 Middleware Services and SOA Infrastructure

Design in IBM Global Technology Services

This section gives an overview of IBM Global Technology Services and its middleware

service product line. It introduces SOA infrastructures as the technology

domain the case study is concerned with, as well as supporting assets and the

knowledge management strategy employed by IBM Global Technology Services.

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