Applying Pattern Approach for Solution Architecture Design: A Case Study in Retail Solution

Architecture design is an essential phase in software engineering. To effectively re-use pre-verified knowledge is critical for design high-quality architecture. Among several different approaches, architectural patterns are widely investigated as they capture the fundamental structural and behavioral principles of architecture design. Although a lot of patterns have already been defined, the application of patterns is still far from satisfaction because of lacking well-organized framework. In this paper, we introduce the IBM pattern for e-business, which provides a layered framework to organize e-business patterns and also a methodology to apply these patterns systematically across different phases of architecture design. We report a real case study of applying IBM pattern for e-business in designing a retail solution.