What is architecture?
And why it's important

January, 2002

Architecture as it applies to information systems can be defined as:

As our computing activities become more complex, architecture becomes increasingly important. In this article, we describe the concept of architecture and show how it impacts the cost effectiveness of publishing and information retrieval operations. We draw on ten years of our own experience from 1992 to the present, and describe the evolution of our architecture through four stages:

• Making the transition from print to web publishing
• Adding a membership service
• Separating format and content
• Integrating search and browse with a customized search engine

In this discussion, we are concerned with computer architecture in the general sense. The term "information architecture," which deals with web site design and usability issues, applies to a subset of the topic.

Includes drawings, links to examples of other architectures and related articles.

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Created on January 31, 2002