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What does 'which' here mean?



 
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What does 'which' here mean? #1 (permalink) Wed Apr 25, 2007 15:27 pm   What does 'which' here mean?		  
Hi,guys

Here,there is one article I read. I have one question. Could you help me?

Quote:
Secondly, most businesses focus on their core activities and cooperate with other businesses to obtain other required services, so as to meet customers’ requests. However, existing inter-business electronic systems, mostly following Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standard, are implemented with proprietary data formats and communication protocols. Nevertheless, in today’s dynamic environment, businesses are very likely to change their partners for the purpose of reducing costs or improving product quality, which will in turn incur much cost resulted from incompatible systems or applications. Hence it is imperative that businesses need an architecture that supports loosely integration of heterogeneous applications, which will lower the cost of system integration and thus make businesses more competitive.

What does 'which' mean here? My answer is 'architecture'. Am I right?

Thanks in advance.

Greetings!

Maggie Laughing
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What does 'which' here mean? #2 (permalink) Wed Apr 25, 2007 16:03 pm   What does 'which' here mean?		  
I think you are right that the writer meant it to go with "architecture" in this case. The "which", however, should support "heterogeneous applications". It is one of the grammar rules this writer didn't follow...Technical writers often try to squeeze too much into a sentence, making it unclear. This is one of the cases.
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What does 'which' here mean? #3 (permalink) Wed Apr 25, 2007 19:51 pm   What does 'which' here mean?		  
Hi Maggie,

In the passage you have quoted you'll see that there is a comma before the relative pronoun 'which' and thereby indicates that this is a non-defining relative pronoun or doesn't refer directly to the previous word. My feeling is that the 'which' in your sentence:

Quote:
an architecture that supports loosely integration of heterogeneous applications, which will lower the cost of system integration and thus make businesses more competitive.

refers to the whole idea of what this type of architecture achieves.

Alan
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