Architecting as decision making with patterns and primitives

The application of patterns is used as a foundation for many central design decisions in software architecture, but because of the informal nature of patterns, these design decisions are usually not precisely documented in the models. In our earlier work, we had proposed pattern primitives as a solution to precisely model the patterns in the corresponding architectural views. Building upon that approach, this paper introduces a pattern-based architecting process that aims at inexpensively documenting design decisions in the architectural views alongside the natural flow of design. The decisions that are made explicit, concern the selection of patterns, their variants and the corresponding primitives, as well as the resolution of inconsistencies between the architectural views. The approach is demonstrated in the domain of process-driven SOA for two architectural views: Component-and-Connector and Process Flow.