Modelling Data Flow and Information Channels

Before we delve further into policies and more analysis of our models, I want to first take a small detour and look at the data channels in our models. We earlier explained that we could refine the various classifications on our channels down to fine grained rules, this is one kind of refinement. We can also refine the channel structure itself to make the various "conversations" between components clear.

Firstly, what is a channel? There's the mathematical explanation taken from [1]:

An information channel consists of an indexed family C = { f_i : A_i <-> C} i\in I of infomorphisms with a common codomain C, called the core of the channel.

Phew! Or a more everyday description that an information channel is the conversation between two elements such as persons, system components, applications, servers etc.

We also note that conversations tend to be directed in the direction that the information flows. We generally don't model the ack/nack type protocol communications.

Starting with our model from earlier:

We should and can refine this to explicitly distinguish the particular conversations that occur between the application and the back end.

While the two components communicate all this information, maybe even over the same implementation, we might wish to explicitly distinguish between the primary and secondary information flows. The reason could be due to differing consent mechanisms, or differing processing on the receiving end etc.

In the above we are explicitly denoting two different conversations. These conversations are logically separate and from the information usage point of view.

As we decompose our channels into the constituent, logically separate conversations we are also making decisions about how the system should keep apart the data transported over those conversations. Whether this translates into physical separation or however the logical differentiation is made is an architectural issue modelled and decided elsewhere.

As we shall see later when we decompose the processing elements in our data flow model we can track the flows and where those flows meet, diverge, cross-reference and infer points of possible contamination.


References:

[1] Barwise and Seligman. (1997) Information Flow. Cambridge University Press.