8. Information

Information architect: The individual who organizes the patterns in data, making the complex clear; a person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal path to knowledge; the emerging 21st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding and the science of the organization of information.

—Richard Saul Wurman

A significant dichotomy has always existed between the worlds of processing and information and between the dynamic and static aspects of software engineering. Although processing is not fully dynamic and information is not fully static, information pertains to those aspects of the domain that remain constant over time (i.e., the business entities that remain persistent throughout the processing part of an application). Customer information may get updated or transactions posted to an account or ledger, but there is a business entity, account, or customer that is constant. Information plays a central role in information technology. Recall that IT in the past was referred to as data processing because the heart of IT is data and processing of that data.