1. Introduction to Software Architecture

2. What is Software Architecture?  It is the body of methods and techniques that help us to manage the complexities of software development.  It is a natural extension of the software engineering discipline.  In early literature it was referred to as programming in the large.

3. Evolution of Software Development  Software development began around 1949 when the first stored-program computer, the Cambridge EDSAC, was created.  In the early 1950s the notion of a subprogram (subroutine) was invented.  IBM developed FORTRAN in the late 1950s to allow “automatic programming” for scientific problems.

4. Evolution of Software Development (Cont’d)  The term software was coined in the 1960s.  By the late 1960s software had become a critical component of many systems, yet was too complex to develop with any certainty of schedule or quality – this situation became know as the software crisis.  The software development community instituted software engineering as a solution to the software crisis.

5. Evolution of Software Development (Cont’d)  In 1968, Edsger Dijkstra published a paper on the design of a multiprogramming system called “THE” that documented the design of a software system using hierarchical layers, from which the phrase layers of abstraction was derived. This was the first glimpse of software architecture.

6. Evolution of Software Development (Cont’d)  A paradigm shift occurred in the first half of the 1970s with the development of structured design and software development models.  In 1972 David Parnas published a paper that discussed how modularity in systems design could improve system flexibility and comprehensibility while shortening development time.

7. Evolution of Software Development (Cont’d)  In the 1980s software engineering research shifted focus toward integrating designs and design processes into the larger context of software development process and management.  In the latter half of the 1980s a new design paradigm – object-orientation – began to take hold.

8. Evolution of Software Development (Cont’d)  At the same time there was a shift in application design metaphors from text- based terminals to graphical user interfaces (GUIs).  In the late 1980s and early 1990s the term software architecture began to appear in literature.  By the mid 1990s object-oriented programming was in full swing and the Internet was becoming the new computing platform.

9. Evolution of Software Development (Cont’d)  Around the same time software design was experiencing a shift toward the integration of methods.  This multiview approach culminated in the development of the Unified Modeling Language (UML).  Also in the late 1990s design patterns started becoming a popular way to share design knowledge.

10. Fundamentals of Software Engineering  The fundamental goals of software engineering are to develop systems that are cost effective and of high quality.  It is primarily issues of complexity that make achieving these goals difficult.  As systems grow in complexity certain quality attributes become more important.  In small systems we can focus on functional correctness and performance.  In more complex systems we need to address security, reliability, portability, and modifiability.

11. Fundamental Software Engineering Techniques  Reusable assets  General-purpose programming languages  Special-purpose programming languages  Modeling languages and notations

12. Elements of Software Architecture  Components, connectors, and qualities  Architectural description  Software architecture versus software design methodologies  Types of architecture

13. Components, Connectors, and Qualities  According to the IEEE, an architecture is “the fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships [connectors] to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution.”

14. Architectural Description  Architecting is the creation of descriptions of a system that are suitable for evaluation and serve as plans for implementation.  The description of a system must include the specification of quality attributes and the description of the design in terms of software structures that will implement those properties.

15. Software Architecture versus Software Design Methodologies  The concept of architecting in software is meant to subsume the activities of analysis and design into a larger, more coherent design framework.  Architecting involves the integration of various methodologies and models.

16. Types of Architecture  Business architecture The analysis and design of business processes  Information technology (IT) architecture Defines the hardware and software building blocks of the information system  Information architecture Includes logical and physical data assets and data management resources  Application (software) architecture The blueprint for individual applications systems, their interactions, and their relationships to the business processes

17. Summary  Systems have architectures, but architectures are not systems.  Architectural descriptions are not architectures; they describe the architecture of a system.  Architectural descriptions are composed of multiple views.  Software architecture design subsumes and integrates many software design methodologies.