What are great examples of high level design documentation for software?

Question

I have over twenty years of software engineering experience and I've seen countless examples of architecture documents but I rarely see a high level design document that really stands out. I'm also surprised that there isn't a de facto specification or book that I know of.What are good examples or templates for a high level design that you use for describing distributed systems? Is there a book or similar resource that I'm missing?

9wzYQbTYsAIc · Accepted Answer

This is likely not what you are looking for, but worth pointing out, as the web is a distributed system.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/
https://www.w3.org/standards/
edit: Not as formalized as other documents, but you you might enjoy this high-level document: https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html
Both IETF and W3C use strong templates for their documents and have well established processes for working groups.

StuckDuck · Answer

I think the gnome project deserves a mention here, their docs program is really complete, and covers many high level aspects of how to use the software. Most gnome apps also use it

_448 · Answer

> I'm also surprised that there isn't a de facto specification...Wasn't OMG/UML suppose to do that?