Chapter 6 – Architectural Design

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Topics covered

 Architectural design decisions

 Architectural patterns

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Architectural design

 Architectural design is concerned with understanding

how a software system should be organized and
designing the overall structure of that system.
 Architectural design is the critical link between design
and requirements engineering, as it identifies the main
structural components in a system and the relationships
between them.
 The output of the architectural design process is an
architectural model that describes how the system is
organized as a set of communicating components.

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Architectural abstraction

 Architecture in the small is concerned with the

architecture of individual programs. At this level, we are
concerned with the way that an individual program is
decomposed into components.
 Architecture in the large is concerned with the
architecture of complex enterprise systems that include
other systems, programs, and program components.
These enterprise systems are distributed over different
computers, which may be owned and managed by
different companies.

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Advantages of explicit architecture

 Stakeholder communication
 Architecture may be used as a focus of discussion by system
stakeholders.
 System analysis
 Means that analysis of whether the system can meet its non-
functional requirements is possible.
 Large-scale reuse
 The architecture may be reusable across a range of systems
 Product-line architectures may be developed.

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Architectural representations

 Simple, informal block diagrams showing entities and

relationships are the most frequently used method for
documenting software architectures.

 But these have been criticized because they lack

semantics, do not show the types of relationships
between entities nor the visible properties of entities in
the architecture.

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Use of architectural models

 As a way of facilitating discussion about the system

design
 A high-level architectural view of a system is useful for
communication with system stakeholders and project planning
because it is not cluttered with detail. Stakeholders can relate to
it and understand an abstract view of the system. They can then
discuss the system as a whole without being confused by detail.
 As a way of documenting an architecture that has been
designed
 The aim here is to produce a complete system model that shows
the different components in a system, their interfaces and their
connections.

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Architectural design decisions

 Architectural design is a creative process so the process

differs depending on the type of system being
developed.

 However, a number of common decisions span all design

processes and these decisions affect the non-functional
characteristics of the system.

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Architectural design decisions

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Architecture reuse

 Systems in the same domain often have similar

architectures that reflect domain concepts.
 Application product lines are built around a core
architecture with variants that satisfy particular customer
requirements.
 The architecture of a system may be designed around
one of more architectural patterns or ‘styles’.
 These capture the essence of an architecture and can be
instantiated in different ways.

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Architecture and system characteristics

 Performance
 Localise critical operations and minimise communications. Use
large rather than fine-grain components.
 Security
 Use a layered architecture with critical assets in the inner layers.
 Safety
 Localise safety-critical features in a small number of sub-
systems.
 Availability
 Include redundant components and mechanisms for fault
tolerance.
 Maintainability
 Use fine-grain, replaceable components.
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Architectural patterns

 Patterns are a means of representing, sharing and

reusing knowledge.
 An architectural pattern is a stylized description of good
design practice, which has been tried and tested in
different environments.
 Patterns should include information about when they are
used and when the are not useful.
 Patterns may be represented using tabular and graphical
descriptions.

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Layered architecture

 Used to model the interfacing of sub-systems.

 Organises the system into a set of layers (or abstract
machines) each of which provide a set of services.
 Supports the incremental development of sub-systems in
different layers. When a layer interface changes, only the
adjacent layer is affected.

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The Layered architecture pattern

Name Layered architecture

Description Organizes the system into layers with related functionality

associated with each layer. A layer provides services to the
layer above it so the lowest-level layers represent core services
that are likely to be used throughout the system. See Figure 6.6.
When used Used when building new facilities on top of existing systems;
when the development is spread across several teams with
each team responsibility for a layer of functionality; when there
is a requirement for multi-level security.
Advantages Allows replacement of entire layers so long as the interface is
maintained. Redundant facilities (e.g., authentication) can be
provided in each layer to increase the dependability of the
system.
Disadvantages In practice, providing a clean separation between layers is often
difficult and a high-level layer may have to interact directly with
lower-level layers rather than through the layer immediately
below it. Performance can be a problem because of multiple
levels of interpretation of a service request as it is processed at
each layer.

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A generic layered architecture

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Repository architecture

 Sub-systems must exchange data. This may be done in

two ways:
 Shared data is held in a central database or repository and may
be accessed by all sub-systems;
 Each sub-system maintains its own database and passes data
explicitly to other sub-systems.
 When large amounts of data are to be shared, the
repository model of sharing is most commonly used a
this is an efficient data sharing mechanism.

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The Repository pattern

Name Repository

Description All data in a system is managed in a central repository that is

accessible to all system components. Components do not
interact directly, only through the repository.

When used You should use this pattern when you have a system in which
large volumes of information are generated that has to be
stored for a long time.

Advantages • Components can be independent—they do not need to

know of the existence of other components.
• Changes made by one component can be propagated to
all components.
• All data can be managed consistently (e.g., backups done
at the same time) as it is all in one place.
Disadvantages • The repository is a single point of failure so problems in
the repository affect the whole system.
• May be inefficiencies in organizing all communication
through the repository.
• Distributing the repository across several computers may
be difficult.

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Client-server architecture

 Distributed system model which shows how data and

processing is distributed across a range of components.
 Can be implemented on a single computer.
 Set of stand-alone servers which provide specific
services such as printing, data management, etc.
 Set of clients which call on these services.
 Network which allows clients to access servers.

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The Client–server pattern

Name Client-server

Description In a client–server architecture, the functionality of the system is

organized into services, with each service delivered from a
separate server. Clients are users of these services and access
servers to make use of them.

When used Used when data in a shared database has to be accessed from a
range of locations.

Advantages The principal advantage of this model is that servers can be

distributed across a network. General functionality (e.g., a printing
service) can be available to all clients and does not need to be
implemented by all services.

Disadvantages • Each service is a single point of failure so susceptible to denial

of service attacks or server failure.
• Performance may be unpredictable because it depends on the
network as well as the system.
• May be management problems if servers are owned by
different organizations.

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A client–server architecture for a film library

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Pipe and filter architecture

 Functional transformations process their inputs to

produce outputs.
 May be referred to as a pipe and filter model.
 Variants of this approach are very common. When
transformations are sequential, this is a batch sequential
model which is extensively used in data processing
systems.
 Not really suitable for interactive systems.

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The pipe and filter pattern

Name Pipe and filter

Description The processing of the data in a system is organized so that each

processing component (filter) is discrete and carries out one type of
data transformation. The data flows (as in a pipe) from one component
to another for processing.

When used Commonly used in data processing applications (both batch- and
transaction-based) where inputs are processed in separate stages to
generate related outputs.

Advantages • Easy to understand and supports transformation reuse.

• Workflow style matches the structure of many business processes.
Evolution by adding transformations is straightforward.
• Can be implemented as either a sequential or concurrent system.
Disadvantages • The format for data transfer has to be agreed upon between
communicating transformations.
• Each transformation must parse its input and unparse its output to
the agreed form.
• This increases system overhead and may mean that it is
impossible to reuse functional transformations that use
incompatible data structures.

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Key points

 A software architecture is a description of how a software

system is organized.
 Architectural design decisions include decisions on the
type of application, the distribution of the system, the
architectural styles to be used.
 Architectural patterns are a means of reusing knowledge
about generic system architectures. They describe the
architecture, explain when it may be used and describe
its advantages and disadvantages.

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