Semantic architecture

Semantic architecture is a concept in software architecture. It proposes the creation of more useful architecture descriptions which can unambiguously capture, catalog, communicate, preserve, and can interoperably exchange semantics between different architectures.

Overview

The overall goals of the semantic architecture are

• to define a formal semantic way of representing architecture intended to be both human and machine readable
• to describe a system architecture at a high level of abstraction
• to support automatic generation of software architecture models
• to permit analysis of architectural quality attributes
• to provide a repository of patterns expressed utilizing the semantic web standards RDF/S and OWL

In order to achieve these goals, the software architecture community and industry need to define

• a common architecture description language
• an OWL ontology for architecture data models
• a set of tools for capturing, querying, and visualizing all aspects and view points of an architecture

The tooling or toolkits for semantic architecture should

• be suitable for communicating an architecture to all stakeholders
• supports architecture creation, refinement, evaluation, and validation of quality attributes
• provides a basis for further implementation
• allows the architecture community to exchange semantics of architecture styles and patterns in an interoperable fashion

See also

• Software architecture
• Semantic Web
• Ontology-based data integration
• Semantic mapper
• Semantic translation