Terminology: use of the terms: “model” and “view”
My use of the terms: “model” and “view” is not in de spirit of ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, and that should be noted. I will try to describe the issue and the reason why I will not attempt (at least for the time being) to be more in line with ISO-42010 (IEEE-1471).
In ISO 42010, a view is a set of architectural models.
“An Architecture View in an Architecture Description expresses the Architecture of the System of Interest from the perspective of one or more Stakeholders to address specific Concerns, using the conventions established by its viewpoint. An Architecture View consists of one or more Architecture Models.” quoted from http://www.iso-architecture.org/ieee-1471/cm/
A model, in its turn, is a coherent set of architectural elements. To put it simply, the term model has a formal meaning, while the term view denotes a collection of models (not formalized, but conformant to a Viewpoint).
This contrasts the use of the terms in Archi, the favorite tool for most of us. In Archi, views are collections of elements from a model (i.e., not all elements from the model are included, and some may be included more than once).
As I understand it, ISO 42010 shifts the terminology of Architecture Description: what has been called a view, is now being called a model. For example, in “Software Architecture in Practice”, Third Edition - by Len Bass, Paul Clements, and Rick Kazman of SEI, we can read: “A view is a representation of a coherent set of architectural elements, as written by and read by system stakeholders.” (page 22) The C&C views are defined accordingly.
The definition from “Software Architecture in Practice” is in line with the original vocabulary of the people who gave form to the idea of “architecture views” like Kruchten - check his paper on 4+1 views from 1995 (... To describe a software architecture, we use a model composed of multiple views or perspectives ...). At the time, as it appears, the word “model” didn’t have a specific meaning in the context of Architecture Description.
To sum it up: a change from “view terminology” to “model terminology” has taken place.
That is not something I want to go into it, but I felt I have to mention it to avoid confusion. Entering a thorough discussion in the context of this effort (C&C in ArchiMate) would not bring much, I believe. My preference is to deal with the issue pragmatically.
I propose we continue to use the term “view” in the way it is defined in “Software Architecture in Practice” and used in Archi. We need a term that can indicate a subset of a model; let it be “view”. If there are better ideas, I would be glad to hear them. Formally, the use of the term in Archi is probably not incorrect: an ISO 42010 architecture view may consist of only one model, and not all elements of that model need to be included.