Interchangeability

Kind: quality-attribute

Layer: Structural Core

Record: architecture:interchangeability

Severity: recommended

Scope: component, plugin, service

Canonical: Ontology

The degree to which several implementations conform to one contract closely enough to be selected at runtime.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Replaceability and before Independence.

Requires

• Contract Compatibility
• Contract Compatibility

Reinforces

• Replaceability
• Polymorphism

Enables

• Strategy Swap
• Strategy Swap

Conflicts with

• Implementation-Specific Contracts

In tension with

• Specialized Optimization

Tensions

• Interchangeability / Specialized Optimization

Violated by

• Implementation-Specific Contracts

Refactored by

• Standardize the Interface
• Extract Adapter
• Contract Testing

Severity

• recommended

Category

• Core Modular Design

Reinforced by

• Abstract Factory Pattern

Linked from

• Core Modular Design
• SOLID / Object-Oriented Design
• Creational Patterns
• Codebase / System Architecture Styles
• Contracts / Interfaces / Compatibility
• Core Modular Design
• Severity levels
• The resolutions