Enterprise Architecture of Purchasing Management: SBC Architecture Description Language in Practice

An enterprise is complex that it comprises multiple views such as strategy/version n, strategy/version n+1, concept, analysis, design, implementation, structure, behavior and input/output data views. Accordingly, an enterprise is defined as a set of interacting components forming an integrated whole of that enterprise’s multiple views. Since structure and behavior views are the two most prominent ones among multiple views, integrating the structure and behavior views is a method for integrating multiple views of an enterprise. In other words, structure-behavior coalescence (SBC) results in the coalescence of multiple views. Therefore, it is concluded that the SBC architecture is so proper to model the multiple views of an enterprise. In this book, we use the SBC architecture description language (SBC-ADL) to describe and represent the enterprise architecture of purchasing management. An architecture description language is a special kind of system model used in defining the architecture of an enterprise. SBC-ADL uses six fundamental diagrams to formally grasp the essence of an enterprise and its details at the same time. These diagrams are: a) architecture hierarchy diagram, b) framework diagram, c) component operation diagram, d) component connection diagram, e) structure-behavior coalescence diagram and f) interaction flow diagram. Enterprise architecture is on the rise. By this book’s introduction and elaboration of the enterprise architecture of purchasing management, all readers may understand clearly how the SBC-ADL helps architects effectively perform architecting, in order to productively construct fruitful enterprise architectures.