From Viewpoints and Abstraction Levels in Software Engineering Towards Multi-Viewpoints/Multi-Hierarchy in Software Architecture

Viewpoints concept could be considered one of the major concepts introduced in the software engineering domain in order to enhance the architectural organization of complex systems by separating its concerns. Despite his ultimate importance, this concept must be evolved and hierarchized in order to allow the jump of software architectures field from its current range of complexity coverage and resolution to a new range more secure, more standardized and more appropriate with the current industrial needs. This paper begins with a survey of the role and usage of the viewpoints, and the hierarchy definition by abstraction levels concepts. Then presents a small but complete analysis of the related works and their limitations, in order to conclude with a proposition of current work on a multi-viewpoints and multi-abstraction levels software architecture.