Although the use of multiple views is a virtual holy grail of software and systems engineering, its status appears less secure in the field known as Software Architecture. Yet, practicing architects need views to manage the inherent complexity of the large, software-intensive systems they specify and build. This paper begins with a brief survey of the topic from its historical origins through current usage and issues, and ends with an overview of an approach to treating views as first-class entities within architectural description with respect to their usage in architectural specification, analysis and evolution. IEEE P1471 does not take a position on where views come from.
Views have a long history in software engineering.
What is interesting in this long history is the evolution of viewpoints in earliest work, viewpoints were fixed items. Views and viewpoints in software systems architecture. Position paper from the First Working IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, San Antonio, 1999. Views and viewpoints in software systems architecture. Position paper from the First Working IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, San Antonio, 1999.