Replaceability

Kind: quality-attribute

Layer: Structural Core

Record: architecture:replaceability

Severity: recommended

Scope: component, service, infrastructure

Canonical: Ontology

The degree to which a component can be swapped for another implementation of its interface without editing its callers.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Reusability and before Interchangeability.

Requires

• Stable Interfaces
• Low Coupling

Reinforces

• Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP)
• Ports and Adapters Architecture

Enables

• Vendor Swap
• Plugin Architecture

Conflicts with

• Concrete Coupling

In tension with

• Deep Optimization

Tensions

• Replaceability / Deep Optimization

Violated by

• Vendor Lock-In Leakage

Refactored by

• Introduce Port
• Extract Adapter
• Invert Dependency

Severity

• recommended

Category

• Core Modular Design

Enabled by

• Explicit Boundaries
• Single Responsibility Principle
• Separation of Concerns
• High Cohesion
• Abstraction
• Modularity
• Dependency Injection
• Component-Based Architecture

Reinforced by

• Portability
• Protocol Independence
• Information Hiding
• Composition Over Inheritance
• Interchangeability
• Adapter Pattern

Linked from

• Principles are typed
• Anti-patterns
• Domain Architecture
• Contracts / Interfaces / Compatibility
• Portability / Infrastructure / Deployment
• Core Modular Design
• SOLID / Object-Oriented Design
• Structural Patterns
• Plugin / Extensibility / IoC
• Codebase / System Architecture Styles
• Codebase / System Architecture Styles
• Core Modular Design
• SOLID / Object-Oriented Design
• Severity levels
• The resolutions