IT:AD:Views And Viewpoints
Summary
A view is specified by means of a viewpoint, which prescribes the concepts, models, analysis techniques, and visualizations that are provided by the view.
Simply put, a view is what you see, and a viewpoint is where you are looking from.
Viewpoints are designed for the purpose of communicating certain aspects of an architecture. The communication enabled by a viewpoint can be strictly informative, but in general will be bi-directional. The architect informs stakeholders, and stakeholders give their feedback (critique or consent) on the presented aspects.
What is and what is not shown in a view depends on the scope of the viewpoint and on what is relevant to the concerns of the stakeholder. Ideally, these are the same; i.e., the viewpoint is designed with specific concerns of a stakeholder in mind.
Relevance to a stakeholder’s concern, therefore, is the selection criterion that is used to determine which objects and relations are to appear in a view.