Dear Saba,

Your question is not something new. Here are the other similar question and the better explanation that I think very appropriate to answer your question:

1. In StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2190625/what-is-the-difference-between-framework-and-architecture)

2. In CodeRanch (http://www.coderanch.com/t/60489/oa/Difference-Architecture-Framework)

Good Luck

Hi Saba,

From IT perspective based on The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) at http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf8-doc/arch/

Architecture has 2 meanings:

1) A formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of the system at component level to guide its implementation

2) The structure of components, their inter-relationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time.

In terms of framework definition, we need to know from which angle we are looking at in science / social science e.g. theoretical framework, conceptual framework or architecture framework etc which carry different meanings.  Based on TOGAF's architecture framework, its definition is:

An architecture framework is a tool which can be used for developing a broad range of different architectures. It should describe a method for designing an information system in terms of a set of building blocks, and for showing how the building blocks fit together. It should contain a set of tools and provide a common vocabulary. It should also include a list of recommended standards and compliant products that can be used to implement the building blocks.

Hence in TOGAF context, architecture is the high level structure / system whereas framework is the lower level tool to implement the structure defined.

Regards,

Fung

Interesting question! Architecture is specialized for a particular system and like previous comment this is more of a sort of high level understanding of the plan. Similar to a building plan  how many rooms you have what are the dimensions, architecture discusses how many compartments I have or modules and where they sit and how they in principle talk to each other. Architecture once implemented makes it for a system and is meant to satisfy system objectives.

In contrast to in order to make faster development and for systems that need to be sustainable, it is better based on experience we define a wired mesh sort of which already has the basic components, but we make make modifications in a legal/defined way instead of changing everything. This is what we see in a framework. It provides some basic features and then allows us to extend.

There is always a debate what you believe is common and what is varying. Since there is no one single answer for all systems, this commonality and variability is much clearer defined for a class of systems. This is where frameworks enable us to accelerate efforts in the right direction. Moreover for someone like us in industrial automation, we would like our development focus on domain specific features and rather reduce time spent on say sorting or searching algorithm development. Therefore it is best to use a framework and scale up and focus on core expertise. Hope this helps!