Software Architecture: Everything from Definition to Best Practices

Summary: Software architecture shapes the structure and behavior of your application. Good software architecture helps you build quality solutions that are adaptable to your future needs. Get a complete understanding of software architecture, its types, best practices for creating an architecture, and more with this comprehensive guide.

The architecture in software engineering can be compared with the architecture of a building metaphorically. Just like we need a blueprint to construct a building that defines its structure, artifacts, internal design, and spatial distribution, software architecture is needed to define the structure and behavior of a software application. It defines various components of software and their relationships that help programmers build the actual software.

We need a solid foundation for a building to ensure its stability, longevity, convenience, and the safety of residents. Similarly, with software architecture, we can build a strong foundation for software solutions that will ensure ease of use, stability, data safety, and other attributes.

This blog will shed light on software architecture and how you can make the best choice for your enterprise application. Stay tuned for an informed decision with great insights ahead.

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The Burning Question – What is Software Architecture All About?

“Software architecture is about the important stuff. Whatever that is.” - Ralph Johnson

In essence, software architecture is about making choices. It involves making decisions about the high-level design and the organization of stuff. It defines the relationship among the components, the flow of data, and how different parts will interact with the whole system.

Apart from fundamentals of software architecture, there are different decisions to be made when it comes to software development including:

• Implementation details like the structure of the folder.
• Decisions about its implementation design like client-side rendering or server-side rendering, type of database relational or non-relational, etc.
• Tech stack for development like Python, NodeJS, REST API, etc.
• Choice of system design like a monolith, decoupled, or microservices.
• Decisions about the hosting infrastructure like on-premises hosting or cloud-based hosting.

Let’s take an example of software architecture in the real world.

Different types of architectural patterns exist today that are used to build software for desktops, mobiles, and the web. Some architecture is best for certain apps and some best for other types of software applications. One example in practice is layered architecture, where the software is divided into different layers. Typically, there are three layers that are:

• Presentation layer: It is responsible for displaying the information.
• Business layer: It has all the business logic for your app.
• Database layer: This layer interacts with a database and performs data transactions.

In a layered architecture, the data flows from one layer to another and there is no cross-communication as it works in a structured manner. For example, the database layer provides data to the business layer, where all the logic is done, and it is provided to the presentation layer that displays the information to the users.

What’s the Significance of Software Architecture?

The importance of software architecture can be described as “if the software is a body, architecture is the soul.”

Just like the architecture of a building, software system architecture helps to build software solutions with the best usability, scalability, performance, and maintainability. It provides an approach to organizing components in a way that renders maximum efficiency and value.

Imagine updating a piece of code that doesn’t follow a specific structure. How hard will it be to add new functionality to it? No doubt, it will be nerve-wracking! This statement also applies to architecture. Good architecture is easy to deal with and adding new functionality is also painless.

A software architecture ridden with a messy structure will lead to technical debt, making it extremely difficult to integrate new functionalities. It will also be hard to maintain, modify, and extend the software as per user demands.

Another advantage of architecture is the stability of the software. Good architecture helps to produce software that is stable with no severe errors and defects. Security is another crucial aspect that software architecture can address effectively. Software engineers can determine an optimal data flow with the architecture to ensure the highest level of data security.

Software architecture guides engineers and helps them understand how different functionalities are to be developed. It is also a blueprint for the actual product, and they can take it as a reference to develop the real solution.

Therefore, the role of architecture in software engineering is crucial and it helps to build solutions that are stable, secure, and modifiable.

What are the Principles of Software Architecture Design?

Since architecture is so crucial for software, you need to design it with the right approach and best software engineering practices for quality solutions. Software engineering principles play an important role in designing software architecture.

The following are crucial principles that software architects follow to come up with the best architectural design for software.

• Separation of Concerns

This principle asserts that software should be divided into various components based on the type of work they do. For example, the software can have different components that show data, fetch data, and perform logic on the data. This is the separation of concerns because each component has its own job and handles specific tasks.

It helps developers build software solutions that are easy to modify and maintain. It decouples the logic and presentation layers that provide an efficient solution. The separation of core business logic from user-interface logic will offer great customizability.

• Dependency Inversion

It states that the direction of dependency should be toward abstraction, not implementation. In simple words, classes or modules should depend on abstract classes or interfaces rather than the concrete implementations of classes. Dependency inversion is a core principle of software engineering that helps developers create modular, testable, and maintainable software solutions.

• Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY)

The DRY principle prevents repetition in code. It states that developers should avoid specifying behavior related to a concept at multiple places in code. The practice of replicating the same behavior across code is a major cause of errors and confusion that result in inconsistent software behavior.

By following the DRY principle, software developers can create resilient and modifiable systems. Instead of duplicating the code in multiple places, it can be encapsulated in a construct like a function, module, or class that can be used anywhere when that concept is to be applied.

• Single Responsibility

In object-oriented programming, the single responsibility principle is an important guiding factor. However, it is also an architectural principle and has a similarity with the separation of concerns. According to this principle, a programming construct should be assigned a single responsibility, plus there should be one reason for its change.

This principle encourages developers to create classes with a single responsibility. It helps developers create smaller classes and allows them to produce more modular and loosely coupled software solutions.

• Encapsulation

Encapsulation should be used to isolate different parts of the software from other parts. It bundles the data and the methods that operate on it, limiting access by other parts of the code. The encapsulation method helps to achieve modularity in software design and creates multiple layers that are loosely connected.

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What Makes Good Software Architecture?

Good software architecture accommodates the needs of every stakeholder based on the characteristics that help developers build stable, extensible, secure, and resilient solutions. Just as a building needs a strong foundation, the software requires robust architecture to stand the test of time. This will help you avoid additional costs on software re-architecture if your existing architecture fails to meet expectations.

Although there are lots of attributes that define a good software architecture solution, some of them are critical to maintaining the quality of software throughout its lifetime. Let’s check out the key characteristics of a good software architecture.

• Reliability: It measures the software system’s ability to continue functioning for a certain period under defined conditions. In simple words, it’s the total uptime of a system during a certain period. Good architecture provides maximum reliability.
• Usability: Software’s usability depends on its ease of use and operability. Architecture that is designed after considering target users helps build software with better usability. The product should meet the users' needs and expectations.
• Compatibility: Compatibility refers to a software system’s ability to exchange data with external systems and function on different hardware and environments. The best architecture for software enables you to build software that is interoperable and compatible with other systems.
• Portability: It is the ability of a software system to be transferred to another hardware and software environment. Portability makes software run on multiple platforms or operating systems. Software system architecture needs to be designed to accommodate the portability attribute.
• Scalability: This attribute allows the software to withstand increasing load without affecting performance. In simple words, scalability is the ability of software to handle an increased user base while the performance remains intact. Scalability is one of the core considerations for software design and architecture.
• Flexibility: Flexibility is one of the most important attributes of good software. It allows software products to easily adapt to new requirements. So, integrating new features or future changes is easy with flexible software.
• Maintainability: It is the ability of a software system to be modified or adapted for improvement or to meet changing needs or environmental factors. You should consider maintainability to choose the right software architecture for your enterprise solution.

What are the Different Types of Software Architectural Patterns?

Software architectural patterns are reusable solutions for problems that commonly occur in software architecture. It provides a structure for various components and defines rules of common interactions. Software architecture patterns provide you with a starting point to build your architecture.

The following are the popular software architecture patterns today.

Layered Architectural Pattern

This kind of architectural pattern offers a layered or tiered software development approach where each layer provides services to the higher layer. It is a popular model in software development due to the ease of implementing and maintaining it. It is like a stack of layers, with each of them being independent but sharing data.

Usually, a layered architecture includes four layers:

• Presentation
• Business Logic
• Persistence
• Database

Uses of Layered Approach

• When software needs to be built quickly.
• Suitable for development teams with limited or no experience in architectural patterns.
• Enterprise solutions with traditional IT systems.
• When testability and maintainability is a strict requirement.

Drawbacks

• The structure doesn’t help in growth and scalability is difficult.
• There is excessive intercedence between layers because every layer is dependent on the layer above to obtain data.
• Complete redevelopment is required even for basic modifications.
• It doesn’t allow parallel processing.

Microkernel Architectural Pattern

This type of architectural pattern comes with minimal core functionality that is required to keep a system operational. More functionalities can be added to a software system that is built with microkernel architecture with the use of ‘plug-ins or extensions.’

The plugins offer specialized processing for the core. It offers a flexible and extensible system that can be enhanced by adding independent components. This kind of architecture is suitable for apps that need to be adapted to evolving requirements.

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Uses of Microkernel Architecture

• It is suitable for software solutions with defined core routines and rules that require constant updates.
• Software solutions that have a division between core routines and higher routines.

Drawbacks

• Modifications are hard if there are too many plugins, and it also creates complexity.
• Plugins require good code to make them function seamlessly with the core system.
• It is more costly to provide services in microkernel architecture.

Even-Driven Architectural Pattern

It is an agile and high-performance architectural pattern used for many types of software solutions today. Event-driven architecture is based on ‘events’, which is a change in state. This architecture is composed of decoupled components that use and trigger events that allow communication between these components.

Event-driven architectures have three components:

• Event producers
• Event routers
• Event consumers

The different components in the event-driven model asynchronously process and listen to events. Node.js is a suitable example of technology that uses an event-driven model. NodeJS is a JavaScript runtime environment and a popular backend technology today.

Uses of Event-Driven Architecture

• Suitable for complex apps that require uninterrupted data flow.
• For apps that require asynchronous data flow.
• Good for user interfaces.

Drawbacks

• Testing can be tricky if individual modules are not independent.
• Handling errors can be difficult because multiple modules are involved in event handling.
• Event-driven architecture is not easy to implement and requires sufficient experience.

Microservices Architectural Pattern

Microservices is one of the modern software architectures that are popular in cloud applications. It follows a modular architecture for software and splits an application into different services that are loosely coupled. These services are independent and communicate through APIs. This architecture allows developers to build software solutions quickly with easier scalability. Since the services are independent, it is way easier to modify them without affecting the whole system.

Uses of Microservices Software Architecture

• To build web apps and business software quickly.
• For apps with swiftly growing data systems.
• In the case of multiple data centers having well-defined boundaries.

Drawbacks

• Addressing all the granularities of a single service is a challenge.
• Not every task can be divided into individual units.
• It may not be good for performance because different microservices are handling the task.

Client-Server Architectural Pattern

Client-server architecture is the foundation of the internet we use every day, that is the World Wide Web. This architectural pattern is composed of two components:

• Client: A user-side interface that sends a request for some data like your web browser in the case of the internet.
• Server: A system that accepts and processes requests to generate a response. This response is then sent back to the client. For example, a remote server in the case of the internet.

Under this model, the client and server exchange data through a network connection. It follows a simple mechanism that is the client makes a request for a resource to the server and the server provides the resource after processing the request. The server works as the central repository for all the information or data that the client needs. The client uses the response to provide an output based on the request, like display content on screen.

Uses of Client-Server Architecture

• For applications focusing on real-time communication.
• For services like emails, file sharing, online banking, etc.
• Applications that require centralized resources.

Drawbacks

• Performance can be a problem in the case of incompatible server capacity.
• Modifying the pattern is complex and expensive.
• Require server maintenance in case of on-premises infrastructure.

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MVC Architectural Pattern

MVC architectural pattern breaks an app’s structure into Model, View, and Controller components. This is one of the most popular web app development models today. There are many web frameworks that are based on the MVC pattern like Laravel, ASP .NET, Ruby on Rails, and Angular.

The role of each component is as follows:

• Model: It is the central component of the MVC pattern, and includes the core functionality and handles the app’s data.
• View: This component handles everything on the user side. It provides user interactions by handling the logic that displays the data to users.
• Controller: It mediates the view and the model and handles the input from users. The Controller handles the app’s logic but doesn’t control the logic of how data is presented to users. The Controller interacts with View to render data. It performs operations on data through the Model components.

Uses of MVC Architecture

• This is a suitable architecture for developing applications that require the separation of business logic and the presentation layer.

Drawbacks

• Data inefficiency and increased complexity.
• MVC is not easy to use with modern user interfaces.
• Reusing, unit testing, and changing this model is not easy.

Things to Consider for Good Software Architecture

Software architects need the right software architecture to develop their applications with the best features and characteristics. The following are the best software architecture practices to create scalable, maintainable, and resilient solutions.

• Start with clear goals about your software solution to create an architecture design that meets the expectations of all stakeholders.
• Follow the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), and other software engineering principles to come up with a simple, scalable, and easy-to-maintain architecture that will benefit you in the long run.
• Today, decoupled systems have become popular due to their flexibility. You can also choose a modular structure for your software that breaks it into different manageable components.
• Considering all functional and non-functional aspects is crucial for architecture design.
• Testing the architecture before adopting it for a final product will help to check the stability of the software.

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In ConclusionSoftware architecture is essential for software solutions as it is like the skeleton of the final product. Choosing a software architecture decides the future of your application. Good architecture will make your application function, scale, and evolve easily.If you need expert advice on software architecture, you can rely on Radixweb. We are a custom software development company with more than 25 years of experience in the industry. We have helped many organizations create scalable, high-performance, maintainable software solutions with the use of diverse tech stacks.Choose Radixweb to create software that aligns with your business objectives, complies with industry standards, and accommodates your future needs. We have the best talent in our development team, who can handle complex challenges and build innovative solutions.