The system context architectural viewpoint

A common requirement when describing the architecture of a software system is the ability to define the environment of a system, in terms of its external dependencies. In a view-based architectural description approach this need is met by adding a Context view to the architectural description and ideally defining a corresponding Context viewpoint to guide and standardise such views. This short paper explains the benefits of adding such a view to an architectural description and provides an outline definition of a corresponding viewpoint to explain the content of these views.