Patent ID: 7930321

Claim:
A method for use in connection with a system comprising a plurality of computing devices, each computing device having an operating system, the method comprising: creating an architecture record for the system, the architecture record including records comprising a plurality of platform definition architectures, a plurality of domain reference architectures, and a plurality of channel reference architectures, wherein creating the architecture record comprises: creating, using a processor, the plurality of platform definition architectures, each platform definition architecture associated with one of the computing devices and the operating system of the computing device; creating, using the processor, the plurality of domain reference architectures, each domain reference architecture associated with one or more of the plurality of platform definition architectures and a service performed by the computing device of each platform definition architecture; creating, using the processor, the plurality of channel reference architectures, each channel reference architecture associated with one or more of the domain reference architectures and a communication channel used by one or more computing devices associated with the one or more domain reference architectures to communicate while performing the respective services associated with the one or more domain reference architectures, wherein the plurality of computing devices include a web server, an application server, and a database server, wherein one of the channel reference architectures is associated with a domain reference architecture for the web server, a domain reference architecture for the application server, and a domain reference architecture for the database server, and wherein the web server, the application server, and the database server are configured to communicate with each other using the communication channel associated with the one channel reference architecture; and storing the platform definition architectures, the domain reference architectures, and the channel reference architectures in memory to create the architecture record.