Question

You are hired to work at Pentel Industries as a Solution Architect. You are assigned to a government project.

The customer (government) needs a solution where the employees can share files, documents, and data while at the office. The employees will edit documents real-time throughout the day.

Would you propose a Client-Server or Cloud Architecture? Why?

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What is a context model? Tell me why it is valuable and how it is used.

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Use sources from Software Engineering by Ian Sommerville when applicable.

Answer 1

Cloud Architecture will be suitable because:

• It provides more transparent view of the system to user as compared to Client server architecture.
• An important concept called Virtualization plays a vital role in such projects. It allows for extensive scalability, giving clients virtually limitless resources which are not present in Client Server Architecture.
• In Client Server Architecture, if we want to improve the functionality related to hardware, it requires high cost whereas in Cloud Architecture, there are multiple servers that take care of specific user needs. So users need to pay only for the services they prefer.
• Cloud Architecture enables fast user authentication as they do not have to manually authenticate themselves every time for accessing files as in Client Server Architecture. This will help employees for editing real-time documents throughout the day.

Context Model

Context model in Software Engineering is a model that defines the boundary between the system, or part of a system, and its environment along with the entities or attributes that interact with it. They are used to represent the operational features of a system. It is a high level view of the system.

It is valuable because of the following reasons:

1. It shows how IT applications fit into the context of people and the organization they serve.
2. It simplifies and introduces greater structure into the task of developing applications.
3. It provides an overall view of the system and its functionalities.

Example –

Context Model for online store

Through this model, user gets an abstract view of different segments of the system. They can easily categorize their problems and solve them efficiently.