Introduction to

Software Architecture
TV Prabhakar

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Antecedents of Software Architecture

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What is Software Architecture?

150+ definitions
What are they?
Both a process and a product

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What type of requirements drive

architectural design?
Answer: Quality attribute requirements are the
primary drivers for architecture design.

Do you agree?

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Architecture and Functionality

Functionality is largely orthogonal to quality
attribute requirements.
Functionality is the ability of a system to do the
work it was intended to do.
Systems are decomposed into elements to
achieve a variety of purposes other than
function.
Architectural choices promote certain qualities as
well as implement the desired functionality.

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Effects of Architectural Decisions

on Quality Attributes
The degree to which a system meets its quality attribute
requirements is dependent on architectural decisions.
A change in structure improving one quality often
affects the other qualities.
Architecture is critical to the realization of quality
attributes.
These product qualities should be designed into the
architecture.
Architecture can only permit, not guarantee, any quality
attribute.

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Architecture-centric development?

Architecture-centric development involves

Creating the business case for the system
Understanding the requirements
Creating or selecting the architecture
Documenting and communicating the architecture
Analyzing or evaluating the architecture
Implementing the system based on the architecture
Ensuring that the implementation conforms to the
architecture
Maintaining the architecture
The architecture must be both prescriptive and
descriptive.

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Attribute-Driven Design
The Attribute-Driven Design (ADD) method,
developed at the SEI, is an approach to defining
a software architecture that bases the
decomposition process on the quality attributes
the software must fill.
a recursive decomposition process where, at
each stage in the decomposition, tactics and
architectural patterns are chosen to satisfy a
set of quality scenarios.

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ADD Method's Inputs and Outputs

Inputs
constraints
functional requirements
quality attribute requirements

Outputs
first several levels of module decomposition
various other views of the system as appropriate
set of elements for functionality and the
interactions among them

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Architecture Documentation
Architecture documentation is important if and
only if communication of the architecture is
important.
How can an architecture be used if it cannot be
understood?
How can it be understood if it cannot be
communicated?

Documenting the architecture is the crowning

step to creating it.
Documentation speaks for the architect, today
and 20 years from today.
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Issues Addressed by
an Architectural Design

Gross decomposition of a system into interacting components

typically hierarchical
using rich abstractions for component interaction(or system glue)
often using common design idioms/styles

Emergent system properties

performance, throughput, latencies
reliability, security, fault tolerance, evolvability

Rationale and assignment of function to components

relates requirements and implementations

Envelope of allowed change

load-bearing walls, limits of scalability and adaptation
design idioms and styles

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Schools of Thought

4 + 1 View
Zachmann Framework
RM - ODP
IEEE
OMG
TOGAF
Product Lines

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4 + 1 view
Philips Kruchten, Rational Software, Architectural Blueprints The 4+1 View Model of Software Archtecture, IEEE Software,
1995

Use case view

Logical view
Process view
Implementation view
Deployment view

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4+1 view

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What do the views do?

logical view is the object model of the design (when an

object-oriented design method is used),
process view captures the concurrency and
synchronization aspects of the design,
physical view which describes the mapping(s) of the
software onto the hardware and reflects its distributed
aspect,
development view describes the static organization of
the software in its development environment
illustrated by a few selected use cases, or scenarios

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Taxonomy of Styles
Data Flow
Batch Sequential
Dataflow Network(pipes & filters)
acyclic, fanout, pipeline, Unix

Closed loop control

Call-and-return
Main program/subroutines
Information hiding(ADT, Object nave client/server)

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Taxonomy..
Interacting Processes
LW processes, distributed objects
Event systems
implicit invocation, pure events

Data-oriented repository
Transactional databases
True client/server
Blackboard
Modern compiler

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Taxonomy..
Data-sharing

compound documents
Hypertext
Fortran COMMON
LW processes

Hierarchical
Layered
Interpreter

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Architectural Styles
An architectural style consists of:
component/connector types, topology
constraints on the topology and behavior
an informal description of the costs and benefits of
the style, e.g. use the pipe and filter style when
reuse is desired and performance is not a top
priority

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Styles, Patterns and Idioms

POSA, Buschmann etal
GOF

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References
sei.cmu.edu
IEEE
OMG
POSA
GOF
WWISA
www.cetus-links.org

Bredemeyer.com

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