Home > Articles > Software Development & Management > Architecture and Design

Prologue: Software Architectures and Documentation

This prologue to Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond, 2nd Edition begins with short overviews of software architecture and architecture documentation and then discusses architecture views, architecture styles and rules for sound documentation.
This chapter is from the book

The prologue establishes a small but fundamental set of concepts that will be used throughout the book. We begin with short overviews of software architecture (Section P.1) and architecture documentation (Section P.2), and then we go on to discuss the following topics:

  • Section P.3: Architecture views
  • Section P.4: Architecture styles (and their relation to architecture patterns) and the classification of styles into three categories: module styles, component-and-connector styles, and allocation styles
  • Section P.5: Rules for sound documentation

P.1 A Short Overview of Software Architecture

P.1.1 Overview

Software architecture has emerged as an important subdiscipline of software engineering. Architecture is roughly the prudent partitioning of a whole into parts, with specific relations among the parts. This partitioning is what allows groups of people—often separated by organizational, geographical, and even time-zone boundaries—to work cooperatively and productively together to solve a much larger problem than any of them could solve individually. Each group writes software that interacts with the other groups’ software through carefully crafted interfaces that reveal the minimal and most stable information necessary for interaction. From that interaction emerges the functionality and quality attributes—security, modifiability, performance, and so forth—that the system’s stakeholders demand. The larger and more complex the system, the more critical is this partitioning—and hence, architecture. And as we will see, the more demanding those quality attributes are, the more critical the architecture is.

A single system is almost inevitably partitioned simultaneously in a number of different ways. Each partitioning results in the creation of an architectural structure: different sets of parts and different relations among the parts. Each is the result of careful design, carried out to satisfy the driving quality attribute requirements and the most important business goals behind the system.

Architecture is what makes the sets of parts work together as a coherent and successful whole. Architecture documentation help architects make the right decisions; it tells developers how to carry them out; and it records those decisions to give a system’s future caretakers insight into the architect’s solution.

P.1.2 Architecture and Quality Attributes

For nearly all systems, quality attributes such as performance, reliability, security, and modifiability are every bit as important as making sure that the software computes the correct answer. A software system’s ability to produce correct results isn’t helpful if it takes too long doing it, or the system doesn’t stay up long enough to deliver it, or the system reveals the results to your competition or your enemy. Architecture is where these concerns are addressed. For example:

  • If you require high performance, you need to
    • Exploit potential parallelism by decomposing the work into cooperating or synchronizing processes.
    • Manage the interprocess and network communication volume and data access frequencies.
    • Be able to estimate expected latencies and throughputs.
    • Identify potential performance bottlenecks.
  • If your system needs high accuracy, you must pay attention to how the data elements are defined and used and how their values flow throughout the system.
  • If security is important, you need to
    • Legislate usage relationships and communication restrictions among the parts.
    • Identify parts of the system where an unauthorized intrusion will do the most damage.
    • Possibly introduce special elements that have earned a high degree of trust.
  • If you need to support modifiability and portability, you must carefully separate concerns among the parts of the system, so that when a change affects one element, that change does not ripple across the system.
  • If you want to deploy the system incrementally, by releasing successively larger subsets, you have to keep the dependency relationships among the pieces untangled, to avoid the “nothing works until everything works” syndrome.

The solutions to these concerns are purely architectural in nature. It is up to architects to find those solutions and communicate them effectively to those who will carry them out. Architecture documentation has three obligations related to quality attributes. First, it should indicate which quality attribute requirements drove the design. Second, it should capture the solutions chosen to satisfy the quality attribute requirements. Finally, it should capture a convincing argument why the solutions provide the necessary quality attributes. The goal is to capture enough information so that the architecture can be analyzed to see if, in fact, the system(s) derived from it will possess the necessary quality attributes.

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020