Software Architecture

Software Architecture 2

 Software architecture refers to the high level structures of a software system,

the discipline of creating such structures, and the documentation of these
structures. These structures are needed to reason about the software
system.

 An architectural pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly

occurring problem in software architecture within a given context.
Architectural patterns are similar to software design pattern but have a
broader scope.
Architectural Patterns

 The fundamental problem to be solved with a large system is

how to break it into chunks manageable for human programmers
to understand, implement, and maintain.
 Large-scale patterns for this purpose are called architectural
patterns.
Architecture Patterns

1. Layered pattern
2. Client-server pattern
3. Master-slave pattern
4. Pipe-filter pattern
5. Broker pattern
6. Peer-to-peer pattern
7. Event-bus pattern
8. Model-view-controller pattern
9. Blackboard pattern
10. Interpreter pattern
1. Layered pattern
 This pattern is also known as n-tier architecture pattern.
 It can be used to structure programs that can be decomposed into groups of
subtasks, each of which is at a particular level of abstraction.
 Each layer provides services to the next higher layer.

Usage
 General desktop applications.
 E commerce web applications.
 Common layers of a general information

systemlayer (also known as UI layer)
Presentation
 Application layer (also known as service layer)
 Business logic layer (also known as domain layer)
 Data access layer (also known as persistence layer)
Layered patte
rn

• Different levels of
abstraction
• Requests go down,
notifictions go back up
• Possible to define stable
interaces between layers
• May add or change layers
over time
Layered patte
rn Solution
 Start with the lowest later
 Build layers on top
 Use same level of abstraction within each
layer
 Componenets cannot spread over two layers
 Keey lower layers lean
 Specify interfaces for each layer
 Handle errors at the lowest level possible
 2. Client-server pattern

 This pattern consists of two parties;

 a server and
 multiple clients.
 The server component will provide services to multiple client components.
 Clients request services from the server and the server provides relevant
services to those clients.
 The server continues to listen to client requests.
Usage
 Online applications such as email, document sharing and banking.
Client /Server Architecture
3. Master-slave pattern

 This pattern consists of two parties;

 master and
 slaves.
 The master component distributes the work among identical slave components,
and computes a final result from the results which the slaves return.

Usage
 In database replication, the master database is regarded as the authoritative
source, and the slave databases are synchronized to it.
 Peripherals connected to a bus in a computer system (master and slave drives).
4. Pipe-filter pattern

 This pattern can be used to structure systems which produce and

process a stream of data.
 Each processing step is enclosed within a filter component.
 Data to be processed is passed through pipes.
 These pipes can be used for buffering or for synchronization purposes.

Usage
 Compilers. The consecutive filters perform lexical analysis, parsing,
semantic analysis, and code generation.
 Workflows in bioinformatics.
 Pipes eliminate need for intermediate files
 Can replace filters easily
 Can achive different effects through recombination
 İf data stream format is standard, filters ay bbe developed independently
 Parallelization possible
 Data Stream processing may be subdivided into stages
 May recombine stages
 Non adjacent stages do not share information
 May desire different stages to be on different processors
 Standardized data structure between stages
5. Broker pattern

 This pattern is used to structure distributed systems with decoupled

components.
 These components can interact with each other by remote service invocations.
 A broker component is responsible for the coordination of communication
among components.
 Servers publish their capabilities (services and characteristics) to a broker.
 Clients request a service from the broker, and the broker then redirects the client
to a suitable service from its registry.

Usage
 Message broker software such as Apache ActiveMQ, Apache Kafka,
RabbitMQ and JBoss Messaging.
6. Peer-to-peer pattern

 In this pattern, individual components are known as peers.

 Peers may function both as a client, requesting services from other
peers, and as a server, providing services to other peers.
 A peer may act as a client or as a server or as both, and it can change
its role dynamically with time.

Usage
 File-sharing networks such as Gnutella and G2)
 Multimedia protocols such as P2PTV and PDTP.
 Proprietary multimedia applications such as Spotify.
7. Event-bus pattern
 This pattern primarily deals with events and has 4 major components;
 event source,
 event listener,
 channel and
 event bus.
 Sources publish messages to particular channels on an event bus.
 Listeners subscribe to particular channels.
 Listeners are notified of messages that are published to a channel to which they have
subscribed before.

Usage
 Android development
 Notification services
 8. Model-view-controller
 pattern
This pattern, also known as MVC pattern, divides an interactive application in to 3
parts as,
 model — contains the core functionality and data
 view — displays the information to the user (more than one view may be defined)
 controller — handles the input from the user
 This is done to separate internal representations of information from the ways
information is presented to, and accepted from, the user. It decouples components
and allows efficient code reuse.

Usage
 Architecture for World Wide Web applications in major programming languages.
 Web frameworks such as Django and Rails.
 9. Blackboard pattern
 This pattern is useful for problems for which no deterministic solution strategies are known. The
blackboard pattern consists of 3 main components.
 blackboard — a structured global memory containing objects from the solution space
 knowledge source — specialized modules with their own representation
 control component — selects, configures and executes modules.
 All the components have access to the blackboard.
 Components may produce new data objects that are added to the blackboard.
 Components look for particular kinds of data on the blackboard, and may find these by pattern
matching with the existing knowledge source.

Usage
 Speech recognition
 Vehicle identification and tracking
 Protein structure identification
 Sonar signals interpretation.
 Problem solvers work independently on part of the problem
 Share common data structure
 Central controller manages access to the blackboard
 Blackboard may be strcured in levels of abtraction to allow work
at different levels
 Blackbpard contain original input and partial solutions
 Difficult to test
 Difficult to guarantee an optimal solution
 Control strategy often heuristic
 May be computationally expensive
 Parallelism possible
 10. Interpreter pattern
 This pattern is used for designing a component that interprets programs
written in a dedicated language.
 It mainly specifies how to evaluate lines of programs, known as sentences or
expressions written in a particular language.
 The basic idea is to have a class for each symbol of the language.

Usage
 Database query languages such as SQL.
 Languages used to describe communication protocols.