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April 10, 2026
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"As the size of software systems increases, the algorithms and data structures of the computation no longer constitute the major design problems. When systems are constructed from many components, the organization of the overall system—the software architecture—presents a new set of design problems. This level of design has been addressed in a number of ways including informal diagrams and descriptive terms, module interconnection languages, templates and frameworks for systems that serve the needs of specific domains, and formal models of component integration mechanisms."
"The goal for our software architecture is to provide the key mechanisms that are required to implement a wide variety of cross-layer adaptations described by our taxonomy. Our strategy for developing such an architecture is actually to create two architectures, a “conceptual” one, followed by a “concrete” one. In this step, we have first"
"Software architecture is at the center of a frenzy of attention these days... We hold that documenting software architecture is primarily about documenting the relevant views, and then augmenting this information with relevant information that applies across views."
"The software architecture of a system or a family of systems has one of the most significant impacts on the quality of an organization's enterprise architecture. While the design of software systems concentrates on satisfying the functional requirements for a system, the design of the software architecture for systems concentrates on the nonfunctional or quality requirements for systems. These quality requirements are concerns at the enterprise level. The better an organization specifies and characterizes the software architecture for its systems, the better it can characterize and manage its enterprise architecture. By explicitly defining the systems software architectures, an organization will be better able to reflect the priorities and trade-offs that are important to the organization in the software that it builds."
"Studies of software engineering projects show that a large number of usability related change requests are made after its deployment. Fixing usability problems during the later stages of development often proves to be costly, since many of the necessary changes require changes to the system that cannot be easily accommodated by its software architecture. These high costs prevent developers from meeting all the usability requirements, resulting in systems with less than optimal usability. The successful development of a usable software system therefore must include creating a software architecture that supports the right level of usability. Unfortunately, no documented evidence exists of architecture level assessment techniques focusing on usability. To support software architects in creating a software architecture that supports usability, we present a scenario based assessment technique that has been successfully applied in several cases. Explicit evaluation of usability during architectural design may reduce the risk of building a system that fails to meet its usability requirements and may prevent high costs incurring adaptive maintenance activities once the system has been implemented."
"In creating a software architecture, system considerations are seldom absent. For example, if you want an architecture to be high performance, you need to have some idea of the physical characteristics of the hardware platforms that it will run on (CPU speed, amount of memory, disk access speed) and the characteristics of any devices that the system interfaces with (traditional I/O devices, sensors, actuators), and you will also typically be concerned with the characteristics of the network (primarily bandwidth). If you want an architecture that is highly reliable, again you will be concerned with the hardware, in this case with its failure rates and the availability of redundant processing or network devices. On it goes. Considerations of hardware are seldom far from the mind of the architect. So, when you design a software architecture, you will probably need to think about the entire system-the hardware as well as the software. To do otherwise would be foolhardy. No engineer can be expected to make predictions about the characteristics of a system when only part of that system is specified."
"Releasing Linux versions has always been a matter of higher code quality, good software architecture, and technical interest for the platform."
"Every software system needs to have a simple yet powerful organizational philosophy (think of it as the software equivalent of a sound bite that describes the system's architecture)... [A] step in [the] development process is to articulate this architectural framework, so that we might have a stable foundation upon which to evolve the system's function points."
"Software architecture is an important field of study that is becoming more important and more talked about with every passing day. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, there exists little practical guidance on managing software architecture in a real software development organization, from both technical and managerial perspectives. This book has emerged from our belief that the coupling of a system's software architecture and its business and organizational context has not been well explored. Our experience with designing and analyzing large and complex software-intensive systems has led us to recognize the role of business and organization in the design of the system and in its ultimate success or failure. Systems are built to satisfy an organization's requirements (or assumed requirements in the case of shrink-wrapped products). These requirements dictate the system's performance, availability, security, compatibility with other systems, and the ability to accommodate change over its lifetime. The desire to satisfy these goals with software that has the requisite properties influences the design choices made by a software architect."
"Generically, an architecture is the description of the set of components and the relationships between them. Simple enough. The trouble starts when you tack on an adjective: There are software architectures, hardware architectures, network architectures, system architectures, and enterprise architectures. People have their own preconceived notions and experiences about “architecture.” A software architecture describes the layout of the software modules and the connections and relationships among them. A hardware architecture can describe how the hardware components are organized. However, both these definitions can apply to a single computer, a single information system, or a family of information systems. Thus “architecture” can have a range of meanings, goals, and abstraction levels, depending on who’s speaking. An information system architecture typically encompasses an overview of the entire information system—including the software, hardware, and information architectures (the structure of the data that systems will use).In this sense, the information system architecture is a meta-architecture. An enterprise architecture is also a meta-architecture in that it comprises many information systems and their relationships (technical infrastructure). However, because it can also contain other views of an enterprise—including work, function, and information—it is at the highest level in the architecture pyramid. It is important to begin any architecture development effort with a clear definition of what you mean by “architecture.”"
"It is argued that software architecture is an effective tool to cut development cost and time and to increase the quality of a system."
"In the last decade most of the large industrialized economies have been shifting from a heavy manufacturing base to an information management base. Along with this shift has been stiff competition resulting from globalization."
"All architecture is design but not all design is architecture. Architecture represents the significant design decisions that shape a system, where significant is measured by cost of change."
"The Information age is well upon us in seven major fields — learning, diagnostics, management, physical planning, finance, entertainment and communication."
"It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it."
"What is involved in information management is ordinarily not the "management" of substantial information per se — in the way that a censor or an Orwellian dictator would "manage" it — but the management of the information process from organization to ultimate use."
"The first phase of software architecture research, where the key concepts are components and connectors, has matured the technology to a level where industry adoption is wide-spread and few fundamental issues remain. The traditional view on software architecture suffers from a number of key problems that cannot be solved without changing our perspective on the notion of software architecture. These problems include the lack of first-class representation of design decisions, the fact that these design decisions are cross-cutting and intertwined, that these problems lead to high maintenance cost, because of which design rules and constraints are easily violated and obsolete design decisions are not removed. As a community, we need to take the next step and adopt the perspective that a software architecture is, fundamentally, a composition of architectural design decisions. These design decisions should be represented as first-class entities in the software architecture and it should, at least before system deployment, be possible to add, remove and change architectural design decisions against limited effort."
"For many companies and people who really ought to know better, information management is a term synonomous with data processing."
"Historically, information management has been a fragmented activity shared among the traditionally independent elements of an organization. Many of the critical data-handling activities (payroll, invoices, payments, inventories, etc.) of an organization have been located in the administrative or financial management offices. Automation of these activities has resulted in placing management responsibilities for computers and information systems in the office of an organization's administrator or controller. Since information-related programs also may be administered by other elements in an organization, in many instances a dispersed information management structure has resulted. For example, activities such as information and library services, statistical functions, information programs, and associated activities (policy, reports, management, procurement, and communications) may not be centrally managed. Often, responsibility for managing these activities and services is shared, and in some instances the jurisdictional responsibility may not be clear. As a result of this fragmented approach, information resources sometimes have been poorly managed and inappropriately used. The current rationale for comprehensive management of information-related activities is that these activities contribute to an organization's effectiveness. According to the general IRM concept, the IRM office within an organization should provide a central focus for all those information activities that support and serve the organization. Also, this office should reflect the organization's specific directions and goals and be consistent with good management practices. The objectives and goals of the IRM office should be formulated to provide a cohesive management framework consistent with organization requirements and values. The IRM policies and procedures should provide a foundation for developing the information architecture and relevant programs required by the organization."
"[The] company’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) should guide the rationale behind the development of EA models. In particular, distribution of IT related information and knowledge throughout the organization is emphasized as an important concern uncared for. Secondly, the lack of architectural theory is recognized..."
"'Information management' is a term that is preferred to 'information retrieval' by System Development Corporation. Information management is defined as the establishment and utilization of effective procedures for controlling the generation, processing, flow, and use of information."
"Thomas Davenport proposes a revolutionary new way to look at information management, one that takes into account the total information environment within an organization. Arguing that the information that comes from computer systems may be considerably less valuable to managers than information that flows in from a variety of other sources, the author describes an approach that encompasses the company's entire information environment, the management of which he calls information ecology."
"Information management is the direct progney of information technology. No wonder, some critics have identified it with information economics. The world of information management is a world of inputs and outputs, in which value additions are the ultimate criteria.""
"Information management is central to human development. No less is it important that man learn to improve his management of materials."
"Information management is itself a field whose definition is unsettled. There is a broad field called information management that has some subsidiary elements, including IRM. Whether the information studies interest is with the whole or the part is unclear."
"The work of the information officer [should be] regarded as the natural dynamic extension of that of the librarian."
"The role of information management is to assist in collecting, organizing, validating, storing, and retrieving data and in preparing reports. An effective information management system is essential to any monitoring program..."
"The software architecture of a system supports the most critical requirements for the system. For example, if a system must be accessible from a wireless device, or if the business rules for a system change on a daily basis, then these requirements drastically affect the software architecture for the system. It is necessary for an organization to characterize software architectures and the level of qualities that their systems support to fully understand the implications of these systems on the overall enterprise architecture."
"Information management is a term which is only now starting to gain a place in common usage. IM is still confused with IT, probably as a result of the similarity of the terms. However, IM is much broader and includes all aspects of handling information. This includes the procedural and clerical aspects as well as any kind of technology that might be involved, not forgetting the most important aspect - the human element. IM includes the management of information in any form,"
"Information management is a term which is being used increasingly to express the changing nature of library and information work. Based conceptually in information science it represents a convergence of the role claimed for the information scientist with that of the librarian who is rapidly embracing new techniques in order to cope with the information explosion."
"The role of information management is a key enabler for demand chain management. It means capturing the market and end user demand information accurately, timely and in a relevant manner: capturing at all times the point of sales through all channels of inventory information."
"Information management is a term used by many to describe the myriad issues associated with managing an organisation's information resource."
"The role of information management is to mediate between information technology and information institutions to facilitate their effective planning, organization, control, and operation."
"Software architecture is still mostly considered a separate issue from programming languages. We contend that this is a serious issue for the software engineering of interactive systems."
"In 1958 the classification ideas in it were felt to controversial, needing to be championed. A few years before, the {[w|Classification Research Group}} had issued a memorandum proclaiming "the need for a faceted classification as the basis of all methods of information retrieval'. As part-author of this memorandum, I must now judge the claim to have been too bold, even brash."
"But do you know that, although I have kept the diary [on a phonograph] for months past, it never once struck me how I was going to find any particular part of it in case I wanted to look it up?|"
"What surprised me, which Google was part of, is that superficial search techniques over large bodies of stuff could get you what you wanted. I grew up in the AI tradition, where you have a complete conceptual model, and the information retrieval tradition, where you have complex vectors of key terms and Boolean queries. The idea that you can index billions of pages and look for a word and get what you want is quite a trick. To put it in more abstract terms, it's the power of using simple techniques over very large numbers versus doing carefully constructed systematic analysis."
"Four years ago, when the first edition of this book was written, information retrieval was beginning to crystallize out as a unified discipline. The process has gone further today. Several other books... have also offered a general survey, although each has contributed its own special emphasis. Many conferences on the subject have been held, and a constant stream of new articles has appeared, both in documentation journals and in those in the data processing field. Information retrieval is now recognized as a discipline, and further advances in theory are being made, What I described in the first edition as the key operation in retrieval — the subject description of documents — is being explored theoretically and experimentally, although we are still a long way from reducing this operation to rule (Chapter 3). There has been less new work on the design of descriptor languages, although ideas on the display of descriptor relations through thesauri and 'semantic maps' have been developed (Chapter 4). Access to files has been examined, particularly by those experienced in data processing."
"Information retrieval is now an accepted part of the new discipline of information science and technology... I have concentrated on the field with which I am most familiar, the problems of bibliographic description and subject analysis."
"An information retrieval system is therefore defined here as any device which aids access to documents specified by subject, and the operations associated with it. The documents can be books, journals, reports, atlases, or other records of thought, or any parts of such records—articles, chapters, sections, tables, diagrams, or even particular words. The retrieval devices can range from a bare list of contents to a large digital computer and its accessories. The operations can range from simple visual scanning to the most detailed programming."
"Brian Campbell Vickery was an enormously influential figure in the field of classification and information retrieval, a powerful force in the development of faceted classification and retrieval theory, and a prolific writer and researcher throughout his life."
"It can be useful to distinguish between knowledge and information and data; it is also difficult and contentious. Four points should be made. [First] Knowledge, information and data is what the systems to be discussed are for: by storing it in an organized manner, they are intended to enable it to be found when needed. Secondly, there is a spectrum of increased size and organization between data, where the units are quite small, through to knowledge, where the units are large and distinguished by their complex internal structure and relationships, and overlap with other units... Meunier (1987) presents a typology of levels of representation which is useful for the breath of its approach and its classification of relationships. Thirdly, "information" in the expression "information retrieval" is generally abused, because what is retrieved is not information, but bibliographic details of sources in which desired information potentially exists. Very many information retrieval systems are at best document retrieval systems, and more usually they are systems which retrieve surrogates for documents... Finally, although the expression knowledge retrieval is particularly associated with artificial intelligence and expert systems, it should not be forgotten that this is what cataloguers, indexers and bibliographers have been doing, and devising systems for, for many years."
"Biological classifications have two major objectives: to serve as a basis of biological generalizations in all sort of comparative studies and to serve as a key to an information storage system... Is the classification that is soundest as a basis of generalizations also most convenient for information retrieval? This, indeed, seems to have been true in most cases I have encountered."
"Information retrieval consists of four main stages: Identifying the exact subject of the search; Locating this subject in a guide which refers the searcher to one or more documents; Locating the documents; Locating the required information in the documents."
"The retrieval process begins when a lack of information shows itself in a human mind and the decision is taken to find out if this information has been discovered and published"
"Whether computers are used for engineering design, medical data processing, composing music, or other purposes, the structure of computing is much the same. We are extremely short of talented people in this field, and so we need departments, curricula, and research and degree programs in computer science... I think of the Computer Science Department as eventually including experts in Programming, Numerical Analysis, Automata Theory, Data Processing, Business Games, Adaptive Systems, Information Theory, Information Retrieval, Recursive Function Theory, Computer Linguistics, etc., as these fields emerge in structure... Universities must respond [to the computer revolution] with far reaching changes in the educational structure."
"The problem of directing a user to stored information, some of which may be unknown to him, is the problem of "information retrieval"… In information retrieval, the addressee or receiver rather than the sender is the active party. Other differences are that communication is temporal from one epoch to a later epoch in time, though possibly at the same point in space; communication is in all cases unidirectional; the sender cannot know the particular message that will be of later use to the receiver and must send all possible messages; the message is digitally representable; a "channel" is the physical document left in storage which contains the message; and there is no channel noise because all messages are presumed to be completely accessible to the receiver. The technical goal is finding in minimum time those messages of interest to the receiver, where the receiver has available a selective device with a finite digital scanning rate."
"Calvin Mooers was a participant in early developmental work on digital computers, a researcher, author, and implementer of applications in information retrieval; and a prophet in the 1950s describing the future importance of what is now called computer networks and distributive processing, and daring to predict that machines could simulate thought processes in retrieving computerized information. In 1947, he proposed the Zator, an electronic, film-scanning retrieval machine, and made the first proposal to use the Boolean operations or, and, and not to prescribe selections in retrieval machines. He developed his own Zatocoding System in 1948 using superimposed subject codes on edge-notched cards. He coined the term "Information Retrieval" in 1950, and went on from there to obtain several patents in information retrieval and signaling, produce a text-handling language (TRAC), author some 200 publications, and form one of the first companies whose only concern was information. His thinking has affected all who are in the field of Information and his early ideas are now incorporated into today's reality."
"The index of a search engine can be thought of as analogous to the stars in [the] sky. What we see has never existed, as the light has traveled different distances to reach our eye. Similarly, Web pages referenced in an index were also explored at different dates and they may not exist any more."