Guideline: Example Analysis Mechanism Descriptions
Examples showing how to describe Analysis Mechanisms
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Main Description

The following shows how to capture information for Concept: Analysis Mechanism.

Persistence

For all classes whose instances may become persistent, we need to identify

  • Granularity: Range of size of the objects to keep persistent.
  • Volume: Number of objects to keep persistent.
  • Duration: How long does the object typically need to be kept?
  • Retrieval mechanism: How is a given object uniquely identified and retrieved?
  • Update frequency: Are the objects more or less constant; are they permanently updated?
  • Reliability: Shall the objects survive a crash of the process; the processor; or the whole. system?

Communication

For all model elements which need to communicate with components or services executing in other processes or threads, we need to identify

  • Latency: How fast must processes communicate with another?
  • Synchronicity: Asynchronous communication.
  • Size of message: A spectrum might be more appropriate than a single number.
  • Protocol, flow control, buffering, and so on.

Notice that there is no design-level information or specification here - it's more about collating and refining architecturally significant requirements.

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