Fundamentals of Software Architecture

Software Architecture :
Software Architecture defines fundamental organization of a system and more
simply defines a structured solution. It defines how components of a software system
are assembled, their relationship and communication between them. It serves as a
blueprint for software application and development basis for developer team.
Software architecture defines a list of things which results in making many things
easier in the software development process.
 A software architecture defines structure of a system.
 A software architecture defines behaviour of a system.
 A software architecture defines component relationship.
 A software architecture defines communication structure.
 A software architecture balances stakeholder’s needs.
 A software architecture influences team structure.
 A software architecture focuses on significant elements.
 A software architecture captures early design decisions.
Characteristics of Software Architecture :
Architects separate architecture characteristics into broad categories depending upon
operation, rarely appearing requirements, structure etc. Below some important
characteristics which are commonly considered are explained.
 Operational Architecture Characteristics :
1. Availability
2. Performance
3. Reliability
4. Low fault tolerance
5. Scalability
 Structural Architecture Characteristics :
1. Configurability
2. Extensibility
3. Supportability
4. Portability
5. Maintainability
 Cross-Cutting Architecture Characteristics :
1. Accessibility
2. Security
3. Usability
4. Privacy
5. Feasibility
SOLID principles of Software architecture :
Each character of the word SOLID defines one principle of software architecture.
This SOLID principle is followed to avoid product strategy mistakes. A software
architecture must adhere to SOLID principle to avoid any architectural or
developmental failure.
 S.O.L.I.D PRINCIPLE

1. Single Responsibility –
Each services should have a single objective.
2. Open-Closed Principle –
Software modules should be independent and expandable.
3. Liskov Substitution Principle –
Independent services should be able to communicate and substitute each
other.
4. Interface Segregation Principle –
Software should be divided into such microservices there should not be
any redundancies.
5. Dependency Inversion Principle –
Higher-levels modules should not be depending on low-lower-level
modules and changes in higher level will not affect to lower level.
Importance of Software Architecture :
Software architecture comes under design phase of software development life cycle.
It is one of initial step of whole software development process. Without software
architecture proceeding to software development is like building a house without
designing architecture of house.
So software architecture is one of important part of software application
development. In technical and developmental aspects point of view below are
reasons software architecture are important.
 Selects quality attributes to be optimized for a system.
 Facilitates early prototyping.
 Allows to be built a system in component wise.
 Helps in managing the changes in System.
Besides all these software architecture is also important for many other factors like
quality of software, reliability of software, maintainability of software,
Supportability of software and performance of software and so on.
Advantages of Software Architecture :
 Provides a solid foundation for software project.
 Helps in providing increased performance.
 Reduces development cost.
Disadvantages of Software Architecture :
 Sometimes getting good tools and standardization becomes a problem for
software architecture.
 Initial prediction of success of project based on architecture is not always
possible.

What is IT Architecture &

Types of Architectures
What is IT Architecture
We talk a lot about IT architectures, but a lot of times people
are confused how to interpret what exactly an IT architecture
is. According to Wikipedia "Architecture is the art or practice
of designing and constructing buildings". IT market analyst
Gartner defines IT architecture as "a series of principles,
guidelines or rules used by an enterprise to direct the process
of acquiring, building, modifying and interfacing IT resources
throughout the enterprise.”

And both are right. In one way IT architecture is the process of

designing and constructing IT solutions guided by principles
and guidelines. But still the definition lacks what should
exactly include a well defined architecture deliverable.
IT architecture should cover and facilitate the following:

 Is a high-level diagram of the IT components in an

application, covering the software and hardware design,
 Shows the fundamentals of how custom-built solution(s)
or vendors´ product(s) are designed and built to integrate
with existing systems and meet specific requirements,
 Is integrated in the software development methodology to
understand and design IT software and hardware
specifications and models in line with standards,
guidelines and specifications,
 Leverages Best Practices to encourage the use of (for
example "open") technology standards, global technology
interoperability and existing IT platforms (integration,
data etc),
 Provides a consistent, coherent and universal way to
show and discuss the design and delivery of solution´s IT
capabilities.

Types of IT Architectures
The other thing that confuses people is there are different
types of IT architectures. The fact is that like when talking
about designing a building as a parallel example, there are
different levels of architecture such as the overall architecture
of the building, floor plans for each floor, and the interior
designs. Same applies to IT architecture and we can
distinguish three types of IT Architectures:

 Enterprise Architecture (EA)

 Solution Architecture (SA)
 Technology Architecture (also referred generally to as IT
Architecture)
We will explain each of these types here below:

Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise architecture (EA) is the blueprint of the whole
company and defines the architecture of the complete
company. It includes all applications and IT systems that are
used within the company and by different companies'
departments including all applications (core and satellite),
integration platforms (e.g. Enterprise Service Bus, API mgt),
web, portal and mobile apps, data analytical tooling, data
warehouse and data lake, operational and development
toolings (e.g. DevOps tooling, monitoring, backup, archiving
etc.), security, and collaborative applications (e.g. email, chat,
file systems) etc. The EA blueprint shows all IT system in a
logical map.
The objective of an enterprise architecture is to focus on
making IT work for the whole company and business and fit the
companies' and business' goals. It looks at the business
strategy and find IT solutions to make it work including
innovation and digital enablement. Therefore, an enterprise
architect needs to be able to understand both IT and business
at a high level.

The intent of EA blueprint is to improve transversal

consistency, coherence and efficiency across the whole
company while meeting its current and future business and IT
objectives.

Enterprise architecture is important to clarify how business

and IT align and how they support, enable and facilitate each
other. In this article about Enterprise architecture, we discuss
more about this specific IT Business alignment.

In a company there is one overall corporate enterprise

architecture view that all applications are embedded in.
However, each and every application has its own solution and
technology architecture. So, each application uses enterprise
architecture standards and technologies, but designs and
builds its own solution and technology architecture to serve its
application purpose. The following diagram depicts that
situation how companies have their architectures structured:
In the following sections we explain the concepts of solution,
technology and IT architectures in more detail.

Solution Architecture
Solution Architecture describes what functionalities a specific
system needs to perform. It is a detailed description of the
functionalities needed to meet business objectives, the logic
that governs them, and the information associated with them.
It is also described as the functional architecture of an
application or system.

A Solution Architecture typically applies to a single project or

project release and facilitates the translation of requirements
into a solution vision, high-level business and/or IT system
specifications. This blueprint receives direction from the
Enterprise Architecture team in terms of corporate business,
information and technical guidance. Difference between a
solution and enterprise architecture and is that its context is
to a specific solution as opposed to an entire company or
enterprise.
Technology Architecture
Technology Architecture is the detailed description of the
various technology components needed to meet business
objectives, the logic that governs them, and the data
associated with them. In summary, IT architecture shows the
software and hardware architecture and is less relevant to
overall business and company strategy, but more focused on
how the specific solution can be served by this platform.

Technology architects focus on how components are designed

and built to help you find robust and cost-effective software
and hardware solutions. They act as the gateway between the
software development team and the business to make sure
that business needs are met.

IT Architecture = Solution + Technical Architecture

So, IT Architecture is the combination of a high level
functional solution architecture together with the alignment of
the Technology Architecture.

It contains the main functional components, but also the

channels, architectural components, databases and
infrastructure. It is the view that aligns business and
technology as it shows the overall solution blueprint. Once you
want to put a double click on each of the architectures, you get
a more detailed solution or technical architecture.

Service-Oriented Architecture
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a stage in the evolution of application
development and/or integration. It defines a way to make software components
reusable using the interfaces.
Formally, SOA is an architectural approach in which applications make use of
services available in the network. In this architecture, services are provided to form
applications, through a network call over the internet. It uses common communication
standards to speed up and streamline the service integrations in applications. Each
service in SOA is a complete business function in itself. The services are published in
such a way that it makes it easy for the developers to assemble their apps using those
services. Note that SOA is different from microservice architecture.
  SOA allows users to combine a large number of facilities from existing
services to form applications.
 SOA encompasses a set of design principles that structure system
development and provide means for integrating components into a coherent
and decentralized system.
 SOA-based computing packages functionalities into a set of interoperable
services, which can be integrated into different software systems belonging
to separate business domains.
The different characteristics of SOA are as follows :
o Provides interoperability between the services.
o Provides methods for service encapsulation, service discovery, service composition,
service reusability and service integration.
o Facilitates QoS (Quality of Services) through service contract based on Service
Level
Agreement (SLA).
o Provides loosely couples services.
o Provides location transparency with better scalability and availability.
o Ease of maintenance with reduced cost of application development and
deployment.
There are two major roles within Service-oriented Architecture:
1. Service provider: The service provider is the maintainer of the service and
the organization that makes available one or more services for others to use.
To advertise services, the provider can publish them in a registry, together
with a service contract that specifies the nature of the service, how to use it,
the requirements for the service, and the fees charged.
2. Service consumer: The service consumer can locate the service metadata
in the registry and develop the required client components to bind and use
the service.

Services might aggregate information and data retrieved from other services or create
workflows of services to satisfy the request of a given service consumer. This practice
is known as service orchestration Another important interaction pattern is service
choreography, which is the coordinated interaction of services without a single point
of control.
Components of SOA:

Guiding Principles of SOA:

1. Standardized service contract: Specified through one or more service
description documents.
2. Loose coupling: Services are designed as self-contained components,
maintain relationships that minimize dependencies on other services.
3. Abstraction: A service is completely defined by service contracts and
description documents. They hide their logic, which is encapsulated within
their implementation.
4. Reusability: Designed as components, services can be reused more
effectively, thus reducing development time and the associated costs.
5. Autonomy: Services have control over the logic they encapsulate and, from
a service consumer point of view, there is no need to know about their
implementation.
6. Discoverability: Services are defined by description documents that
constitute supplemental metadata through which they can be effectively
discovered. Service discovery provides an effective means for utilizing
third-party resources.
7. Composability: Using services as building blocks, sophisticated and
complex operations can be implemented. Service orchestration and
choreography provide a solid support for composing services and achieving
business goals.
Advantages of SOA:
 Service reusability: In SOA, applications are made from existing services.
Thus, services can be reused to make many applications.
 Easy maintenance: As services are independent of each other they can be
updated and modified easily without affecting other services.
  Platform independent: SOA allows making a complex application by
combining services picked from different sources, independent of the
platform.
 Availability: SOA facilities are easily available to anyone on request.
 Reliability: SOA applications are more reliable because it is easy to debug
small services rather than huge codes
 Scalability: Services can run on different servers within an environment,
this increases scalability
Disadvantages of SOA:
 High overhead: A validation of input parameters of services is done
whenever services interact this decreases performance as it increases load
and response time.
 High investment: A huge initial investment is required for SOA.
 Complex service management: When services interact they exchange
messages to tasks. the number of messages may go in millions. It becomes a
cumbersome task to handle a large number of messages.
Practical applications of SOA: SOA is used in many ways around us whether it is
mentioned or not.
1. SOA infrastructure is used by many armies and air forces to deploy
situational awareness systems.
2. SOA is used to improve healthcare delivery.
3. Nowadays many apps are games and they use inbuilt functions to run. For
example, an app might need GPS so it uses the inbuilt GPS functions of the
device. This is SOA in mobile solutions.
4. SOA helps maintain museums a virtualized storage pool for their
information and content.