[Software Architecture] 4A Definition of Enterprise Architecture

foreword

The business architecture is a cross-system business architecture blueprint, and the application architecture, data architecture, and technical architecture are different aspects of the solution.
Over the years, the global industry has accumulated a lot of experience in business architecture, application architecture, data architecture, and technical architecture.

In recent years, digital transformation calls for "knowledgeable people" to break through the four architectures to ensure that technology supports business and business supports strategy.

Among them, the full names of the abbreviations involved in the text are as follows.

BA: Business Architecture, Business Architecture
DA: Data Architecture, Data Architecture
AA: Applications Architecture, Application Architecture
TA: Technology Architecture, Technology Architecture

The relationship between strategy, BA, DA, AA, and TA

Now, let's take an overview of the boundaries and relationships among strategy, BA, DA, AA, and TA. As shown below.

• First of all, the company's management is the proposer and chief architect of the strategy.

  For example, where did the overall strategic plan for a large bank come from? Answer: The management is the planner, and the planning and development department is the facilitator. The Planning and Development Department continues to study the direction of industry policies, pays close attention to changes in the macro environment, and keeps track of the development of friends and businesses.

• Second, the business architect is the designer and describer of the business architecture blueprint.

  For example, a business architect working in a bank's IT department. It is necessary to study strategy, understand strategy, use strategy as the driving force to promote business architecture design, and define a detailed business architecture blueprint.

• Finally, the solution is in the charge of data architects, application architects, and technical architects with more specialized division of labor.

  For example, the information technology department of a bank generally has an architecture office, in which there are full-time or part-time data architects, application architects, technical architects, and special security architects.

• Therefore, strategy, BA, DA, AA, and TA are actually located at the following three levels:

  • company strategy;

  • business structure;

  • Program architecture.

• The core relationship between these five can be summarized as follows:

  • Strategy is the design of the company's top management, but it is the needs of business architects;

  • The job of a business architect is "strategy in, business architecture out";

  • Business architecture is the design of business architects, but it is the needs of data, application, and technical architects;

  • Interlocking, the upper layer drives the lower layer, and the lower layer supports the upper layer.

1. Business Architecture (BA)

• Business function - buy stocks.

• Business process - consists of steps such as buy pending order, rule check, and reporting to the exchange.

• Realization Relationship - An arrow from a business process to a business function.

• Business data——buy declaration order.

• Business events - the "exchange return" event in the figure will trigger the brokerage to "process the transaction result", and when the market closes, the "market close of the day" event will also trigger the corresponding business processing. It can be seen that making good use of business events is conducive to expressing "conditionally triggered business scenarios" clearly.

2. Data Architecture (DA)

data types, data models, data storage, data flow, data management

Data architects should think about: What data support is needed for the business process of buying stocks?

• The brokerage's centralized trading system is used as the background, and the entrustment records must first be queued for asynchronous processing.

• The brokerage app does not save the "investor account" information, but the trading background must save it, and the securities brokerage business background will check the trading rules.

• The transaction rule check, which is in charge of the securities brokerage business background, will use data information such as investor accounts and investor assets. For example, when the account balance is insufficient, it is not allowed to place orders successfully.

• The "return record" data is stored in the background, which is also for asynchronous processing.

3. Application Architecture (AA)

Application function, application integration, R&D management
Application architects should think: what application service support is needed for the business process of buying stocks?

• At the business process level, buy pending orders, rule checks, reporting to the exchange, and processing transaction results require IT application service support, which are respectively entry of pending orders, rule checking, entrustment reporting, receiving returns, and displaying results.

• Furthermore, these IT application services should be realized by specific application systems, which are brokerage apps and brokerage centralized trading systems respectively.

4. Technical Architecture (TA)

Technology selection, technical requirements, physical selection, distribution design

Technical architects should think: What technical components are needed to support the business process of buying stocks?

• Pending order entry, result display and other technologies are supported by client applications.

• Rule checking, delegated reporting, and receiving returns are reusable application functions that can be considered as services or microservices.

• The technical selection of the infrastructure is decided by the technical architect.

Summarize

Positive logic: strategy determines business, and business determines technology.

Reverse logic: technology supports business, and business supports strategy.