Towards the development of a Culture Aware Reference Architecture for mobile technology: A tools and methodology perspective

This paper focuses on culture and software development tools issues with respect to the development of a proposed Culture Aware Reference Architecture (CARA) for the delivery of culture competent mobile oriented solutions through culture awareness. The paper presents a discussion of selected architectural design approaches, tools or methodologies that were considered and applied across defined architectural levels (structural, functional and implementation) of a proposed Culture Aware Reference Architecture for mobile technology developments. These tools or methodologies are presented in the context of culture models with reference to existing literature and to results of an analysis of culture data. That is, data that was collected through a survey that formed part of the research that informed the evolution of a CARA. Areas of application of the identified tools or methodologies in the development and implementation considerations for the CARA are presented. The IEEE 1471-2000 standard is identified as a befitting Architecture Description Language for the proposed reference architecture. The 4+1 View Model is also presented as potential methodology for describing the proposed reference model architectural views that were identified based on the IEEE 1471-2000 standard. Applications of the Model View Controller (MVC) and the Proxy patterns in designing an Agent based dynamic culture aware implementation model of the CARA are also briefly discussed.