An architecture domain in enterprise architecture is a broad view of an

enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterpris ...

or system. It is a partial representation of a whole system that addresses several concerns of several stakeholders. It is a description that hides other views or facets of the system described. Business,

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...

, application and

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...

architectures are recognized as the core domains in the most of proposed concepts concerned with the definition of enterprise architecture.

Overview

Since Stephen Spewak's book called

enterprise architecture planning Enterprise architecture planning (EAP) in enterprise architecture is the planning process of defining architectures for the use of information in support of the business and the plan for implementing those architectures.The Chief Information Off ...

(EAP) in 1993, and perhaps before then, it has been normal to recognise four types of architecture domain. The British Computer Society's "Reference Model for Enterprise and Solution Architecture" also follows this subdivision but additionally mentions the (single) application architecture level just below the application''s'' architecture as well as the domains of information architecture, information systems architecture, or security architecture (a cross-cutting concern): *

Business architecture In the business sector, business architecture is a discipline that "represents holistic, multidimensional business views of: capabilities, end‐to‐end value delivery, information, and organizational structure; and the relationships among these ...

: The structure and behaviour of a business system (not necessarily related to computers). Covers business goals, business functions or capabilities, business processes and roles etc. Business functions and business processes are often mapped to the applications and data they need. *

Data architecture Data architecture consist of models, policies, rules, and standards that govern which data is collected and how it is stored, arranged, integrated, and put to use in data systems and in organizations. Data is usually one of several architecture do ...

: The data structures used by a business and/or its applications. Descriptions of data in storage and data in motion. Descriptions of data stores, data groups and data items. Mappings of those data artifacts to data qualities, applications, locations etc. *

Applications architecture In information systems, applications architecture or application architecture is one of several architecture domains that form the pillars of an enterprise architecture (EA). An applications architecture describes the behavior of applications us ...

: The structure and behaviour of applications used in a business, focused on how they interact with each other and with users. Focused on the data consumed and produced by applications rather than their internal structure. In application portfolio management, the applications are usually mapped to business functions and to application platform technologies. *: Application (or Component) architecture: The internal structure, the modularisation of software, within an application. This is

software architecture Software architecture is the fundamental structure of a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements and relations. ...

at the lowest level of granularity. It is usually below the level of modularisation that solution architects define. However, ''there is no rigid dividing line''. *

Technology architecture Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

or infrastructure architecture: The structure and behaviour of the

IT infrastructure Information technology infrastructure is defined broadly as a set of information technology (IT) components that are the foundation of an IT service; typically physical components (computer and networking hardware and facilities), but also vario ...

. Covers the client and server nodes of the hardware configuration, the infrastructure applications that run on them, the infrastructure services they offer to applications, the protocols and networks that connect applications and nodes. Note that the applications architecture is about the application portfolio, not the internal architecture of a single application - which is often called the application architecture. Many EA frameworks combine data and application domains into a single layer, sitting below the business (usually a human activity system) and above the technology (the platform IT infrastructure). There are many variations on this theme.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Architecture Domain Enterprise architecture

Overview

See also

References