Design Concepts

 

Software architecture alludes (talk about) to "the overall structure of the software and the ways in which that structure provides conceptual integrity for a system.

Shaw and Garlan describe a set of properties that should be specified as part of an architectural design:

  1. Structural properties.
  2. Extra-functional properties.
  3. Families of related systems.

Structural properties:

Architectural design representation defines the components of a system (e.g., modules, objects, filters) and the manner in which those components are packaged and interact with one another.

For example, objects are packaged to encapsulate both data and the processing that manipulates the data and interact via the invocation of methods.

Extra-functional properties.

The architectural design description should address how the design architecture achieves requirements for performance, capacity, reliability, security, adaptability, and other system characteristics.

Families of related systems.

The architectural design should draw upon repeatable patterns that are commonly encountered in the design of families of similar systems.

In essence, the design should have the ability to reuse architectural building blocks.

Given the specification of these properties, the architectural design can be represened using one or more of a number of different models


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