A statement of preferred direction or practice. Principles constitute the rules, constraints and behaviors that a bureau, agency or organization will abide by in its daily activities over a long period of time.
NASCIO Enterprise Architecture Development Tool-Kit v2.0, July 2002
Principles establish the basis for a set of rules and behaviors for an organization. There are principles that govern the EA process and principles that govern the implementation of the architecture. Architectural principles for the EA process affect development, maintenance, and use of the EA. Architectural principles for EA implementation establish the first tenets and related decision-making guidance for designing and developing information systems.
A Practical Guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture, Chief Information Officer Council, Version 1.0, February 2001. Includes sample architectural principles.
Principles are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission.
TOGAF "Enterprise Edition" Version 8.1, Part IV, 2002
An architectural principle is a fundamental rule that applies to a large number of situations and variables. Architectural principles include "separation of concerns", "generic interface", "self-descriptive syntax," "visible semantics," "network effect" (Metcalfe's Law), and Amdahl's Law: "The speed of a system is determined by its slowest component."
Architecture of the World Wide Web, W3C, December 2003
A good analogy for the development of the Internet is that of constantly renewing the individual streets and buildings of a city, rather than razing the city and rebuilding it. The architectural principles therefore aim to provide a framework for creating cooperation and standards, as a small "spanning set" of rules that generates a large, varied and evolving space of technology.
Architectural Principles of the Internet, IETF, June 1996
Guiding Principles for Enterprise Architects, Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer, May 2004
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