Boxology

Even though I thought this paper had an interesting premise, it was not that interesting to read. It really got the feel of a reference book used by designers to figure out how to build their architecture, and reading a reference book always seems dry to me. It is a great attempt at trying to classify high level patterns, a check list for designers to go by when they are designing a system. If a system can be classified as a certain type then you can determine common control and data flow issues that go along with those patterns. However, as other people have pointed out, I don't think it is very useful to try to apply these patterns to a broad system.