Chapter 6 – Architectural Design

By Ian Sommerville

Chapter 6 Architectural Design 1

Software architecture:

✧ Software architecture is the fundamental design of the entire

software system.
✧ It defines what elements are included in the system, what
function each element has, and how each element relates to one
another.
✧ In short, it is the big picture or overall structure of the whole
system, how everything works together.
Let's compare this to designing a skyscraper

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Agility and architecture

✧ It is generally accepted that an early stage of agile

processes is to design an overall systems architecture.
✧ Refactoring the system architecture is usually expensive
because it affects so many components in the system

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Case Study

You are required to make a abstract model of architecture

for a packing robot system. This robotic system can pack
different kinds of objects. It uses a vision component to
pick out objects on a conveyor, identify the type of object,
and select the right kind of packaging. The system then
moves objects from the delivery conveyor to be packaged.
It places packaged objects on another conveyor.

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The architecture of a packing robot control
system

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Box and line diagrams

✧ Very abstract - they do not show the nature of

component relationships nor the externally visible
properties of the sub-systems.
✧ However, useful for communication with stakeholders
and for project planning.

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Use of architectural models

✧ As a way of facilitating discussion about the system

design
▪ A high-level architectural view of a system is useful for
communication with system stakeholders and project planning
because it is not cluttered with detail.
✧ As a way of documenting an architecture that has been
designed
▪ The aim here is to produce a complete system model that shows
the different components in a system, their interfaces and their
connections.

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Architectural design decisions

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Architecture and system characteristics

✧ Performance
▪ Localize critical operations and minimize communications.
▪ Use large rather than fine-grain components.
✧ Security
▪ Use a layered architecture with critical assets in the inner layers.
✧ Safety
▪ Localize safety-critical features in a small number of
sub-systems.
✧ Availability
▪ Include redundant components and mechanisms for fault
tolerance.
✧ Maintainability
▪ Use fine-grain, replaceable components. 9
Architectural views

✧ Each architectural model only shows one view or

perspective of the system.
▪ It might show how a system is decomposed into modules, how
the run-time processes interact or the different ways in which
system components are distributed across a network. For both
design and documentation, you usually need to present multiple
views of the software architecture.

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Architectural views

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4 + 1 view model of software architecture

✧ A logical view focuses,

▪ On achieving functional requirements of a system
▪ Services of the system
▪ The key abstractions in the system as objects or object classes.
✧ A process view, which shows
▪ how, at run-time, the system is composed of interacting
processes.
▪ Like sequence diagram and activity diagram.
▪ useful for making judgments about non-functional system
characteristics such as performance and availability.

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4 + 1 view model of software architecture

✧ A development view, which shows

✧ how the software is decomposed for development.
✧ useful for software managers and programmers.
✧ A physical view, which shows
✧ the system hardware and how software components are
distributed across the processors in the system.
✧ Related using use cases or scenarios (+1)
✧ useful for systems engineers planning a system deployment.

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Architectural patterns

✧ Patterns are a means of representing, sharing and

reusing knowledge.
✧ An architectural pattern is a stylized description of good
design practice, which has been tried and tested in
different environments.
✧ Patterns should include information about when they are
and when they are not useful.

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The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern

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The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern

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Web Application Architecture using MVC

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 The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern

The goal of this pattern is to split a large application into specific section that
has its own purpose.

12/04/2021 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 18

Layered Architecture Pattern

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Layered architecture

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The Layered architecture pattern

As you can see in the diagram above, a standard layered architecture has five parts:
•User interaction layer: This is the layer that interacts with users through screens,
forms, menus, reports, etc. It is the most visible layer of the application. It defines how
the application looks.
•Functionality layer: This is the layer that presents the functions, methods, and
procedures of the system based on the business rules layer. It determines how the
pull-down menus work, how the buttons work, and how the system navigates through
screens.
•Business rules layer: This layer contains rules that determine the behavior of the
whole application, such as, “If an invoice is printed, then send an email to the
customer, select all items sold, and decrease their stock in the stock management
module.”
•Application core layer: This server contains the main programs, code definitions,
and basic functions of the application. Programmers work in this layer most of the
time.
•Database layer: This layer contains the tables, indexes, and data managed by the
application. Searches and insert/delete/update operations are executed here.

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Generic Layered Architecture

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The architecture of the iLearn system

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Repository architecture

• Data is stored in a central shared repository.

• Components interact through the repository only.
• Suited to applications whose data is generated by one
component and used by another.
• Examples of this type of system include command and control
systems, management information systems,
ComputerAidedDesign (CAD) systems, and interactive
development environments for software

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Repository architecture

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A repository architecture for an IDE

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Client-Server Pattern

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A client–server architecture

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Client-server architecture

•Front-End: This is the piece of software that interacts with

users, even if they are on different platforms with different
technologies. Any front-end module in a client-server
architecture is designed to interact with all existing devices on
the market. This level contains the login screens, menus, data
screens.

•Application server: This is the server where the software

modules of the application are installed. It connects to the
database (called back-end) and interacts with users (called
front-end). The application server is like the waiter on our
restaurant example.

•Database server: This server contains the tables, indexes, and

data managed by the application. Searches and
insert/delete/update operations are executed here.
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Client-Server Architecture for a firm Library

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Pipe and Filter Pattern

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Pipe and filter architecture

✧ Functional transformations process their inputs to

produce outputs.
✧ Variants of this approach are very common. When
transformations are sequential, this is a batch sequential
model which is extensively used in data processing
systems.
✧ Not really suitable for interactive systems.

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An example of the pipe and filter architecture
used in a payments system

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Application architectures

✧ Application systems are designed to meet an

organizational need.
✧ As businesses have much in common, their application
systems also tend to have a common architecture that
reflects the application requirements.
✧ A generic application architecture is an architecture for a
type of software system that may be configured and
adapted to create a system that meets specific
requirements.

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Use of application architectures

✧ As a starting point for architectural design.

✧ As a design checklist.
✧ As a way of organising the work of the development
team.
✧ As a means of assessing components for reuse.
✧ As a vocabulary for talking about application types.

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Examples of application types

✧ Data processing applications

▪ Data driven applications that process data in batches without
explicit user intervention during the processing.
✧ Transaction processing applications
▪ Data-centred applications that process user requests and update
information in a system database.
✧ Event processing systems
▪ Applications where system actions depend on interpreting events
from the system’s environment.
✧ Language processing systems
▪ Applications where the users’ intentions are specified in a formal
language that is processed and interpreted by the system.
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Application type examples

✧ Two very widely used generic application architectures are

transaction processing systems and language processing
systems.
✧ Transaction processing systems
▪ E-commerce systems;
▪ Reservation systems.
✧ Language processing systems
▪ Compilers;
▪ Command interpreters.

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Transaction Processing Systems

✧ Process user requests for information from a database

or requests to update the database.
✧ From a user perspective a transaction is:
▪ Any coherent sequence of operations that satisfies a goal;
▪ For example - find the times of flights from London to Paris.
✧ Users make asynchronous requests for service which
are then processed by a transaction manager.

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Software Architecture of an ATM System

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Information Systems Architecture

✧ Information systems have a generic architecture that

can be organized as a layered architecture.
✧ These are transaction-based systems as interaction
with these systems generally involves database
transactions.
✧ Layers include:
▪ The user interface
▪ User communications
▪ Information retrieval
▪ System database

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Layered information system architecture

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The architecture of the Mentcare system

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Language processing systems

✧ Accept a natural or artificial language as input and generate

some other representation of that language.
✧ May include an interpreter to act on the instructions in the
language that is being processed.
✧ Used in situations where the easiest way to solve a
problem is to describe an algorithm or describe the system
data

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The architecture of a language processing
system

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 Compiler components

✧ A lexical analyzer, which takes input language tokens

and converts them to an internal form.
✧ A symbol table, which holds information about the names
of entities (variables, class names, object names, etc.)
used in the text that is being translated.
✧ A syntax analyzer, which checks the syntax of the
language being translated.
✧ A syntax tree, which is an internal structure representing
the program being compiled.

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Compiler components

✧ A semantic analyzer that uses information from the

syntax tree and the symbol table to check the semantic
correctness of the input language text.
✧ A code generator that ‘walks’ the syntax tree and
generates abstract machine code.

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A repository architecture for a language
processing system

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A pipe and filter compiler architecture

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Key points

✧ A software architecture is a description of how a software

system is organized.
✧ Architectural design decisions include decisions on the
type of application, the distribution of the system, the
architectural styles to be used.
✧ Architectures may be documented from several different
perspectives or views such as a conceptual view, a
logical view, a process view, and a development view.
✧ Architectural patterns are a means of reusing knowledge
about generic system architectures. They describe the
architecture, explain when it may be used and describe
its advantages and disadvantages.
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Key points

✧ Models of application systems architectures help us

understand and compare applications, validate
application system designs and assess large-scale
components for reuse.
✧ Transaction processing systems are interactive systems
that allow information in a database to be remotely
accessed and modified by a number of users.
✧ Language processing systems are used to translate texts
from one language into another and to carry out the
instructions specified in the input language. They include
a translator and an abstract machine that executes the
generated language.
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