Abstract. Reference architectures provide major guidelines for the structure of a class of information systems. Because of their fundamental role, reference architectures have to be of high quality. Before accepting a reference architecture, it has to go through a rigorous evaluation process. A number of methods exist for the evaluation of software architectures. In this paper, we analyze the main differences between concrete software architectures and reference architectures. We discuss the effects of these differences on the evaluation of reference architectures and show that existing methods cannot be directly applied for the evaluation of reference architectures. For the evaluation of a reference architecture for e-contracting systems, we used the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method with a number of adaptations and extensions. We present our approach and share our experiences from this evaluation process. Based on the analysis and our experiences gained, we present our vision for a method for the evaluation of reference architectures.
Service outsourcing is the business paradigm in which an organization has part of its business process performed by a service provider. In dynamic markets, service providers can be selected on the fly during process enactment. The cooperation between the parties is specified in a dynamically made electronic contract. This contract includes a process specification that is tailored towards service brokering and cross-organizational process enactment and, hence, has to conform to market and specification standards. Process enactment, however, relies on intra-organizational process specifications that have to comply with the infrastructure available in an organization for process and data management. In this paper, we present a three-level process and data specification framework for dynamic contract-based outsourcing of complex services. We focus on services with an externally visible control flow, as opposed to simple, black-box web services. The framework relates the two process specification levels through a third, conceptual level. This approach is inspired by the well-known ANSI-SPARC model for data management. We discuss an abstract architecture for dynamic service outsourcing based on the three-level framework. We show how the framework and architecture can be placed in the context of existing infrastructures for cross-organizational process support. As service outsourcing is used more and more for core business processes requiring reliable execution, we pay special attention to transaction management.
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