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10 software architecture patterns you should know about

Software enhancement

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The idea of using software architecture patterns derives from the aspiration to make a scalable solution with the priority to meet users’ demands. Moreover, this concept includes such important aspects as security, manageability, and performance. The wrong selection of software architecture design may lead to negative consequences on the other hand. That’s why developers should learn the most popular ones and be aware of their usefulness in each particular case.

What is software architecture pattern?

An architectural pattern is a pictorial representation of the whole system and its subsystems, as well as roles and responsibilities, rules, and even a roadmap to establish relationships among all these parts. Simply put, this is a kind of “blueprint” of the future website, application, or microservice which will be used during the development process.

How important are software architecture patterns?

Software architecture patterns are of great importance as they can bring solutions to various problems across different domains. With the employment of such a concept, teams can simplify testing procedures by dividing them into smaller segments, for example. By using software architecture patterns, developers can segment user requests into smaller chunks of data in order to avoid relying on a single server.

Below you can find some reasons for applying this approach during the application development phase.

Identifying the basic characteristics of an application

Software architecture patterns play a significant role in defining the basic features of any application. This helps, in turn, to define, which patterns can be used for agile applications and which should better be leveraged for highly scalable ones.

Ensuring quality and efficiency

By a proper selection of software architecture patterns, teams can minimize quality issues that may arise during the development and post-development periods.

Assuring agility

Creating a “blueprint” of the future app provides it with a necessary level of agility that, in turn, allows developers to apply numerous modifications and iterations in the future.

Problem-solving

An understanding of software architecture allows developers to have a clear image of the future application components functioning. This approach allows developers to leverage the best techniques in order to tackle all possible issues over time.

Increasing productivity

Standardized principles that are used in software architecture patterns allow teams to quickly see the current status of the project. With this methodology, teams have an opportunity to increase productivity.

The difference between a software architecture pattern and a design pattern

It may seem difficult to distinguish between software architecture patterns and design patterns.However, it becomes more than transparent if we take both separately. Architecture patterns are used for creating business logic, user interfaces, and other aspects, while design is used for implementing business logic.

Software architecture patterns

There are several software architecture patterns that are currently used by teams. Below you can find the most popular ones.

Layered

When applying this particular pattern, each layer has its own distinctive role in the app. Moreover, such an approach allows modifying different components of the application without affecting the other layers. Layered software architecture design patterns can be used by teams with inexperienced developers, or to build applications within a limited timeframe.

Client-server

Such software architecture in practice represents a distributed structure where there are two main components – client and server. By implementing such a technique, teams can facilitate interoperability between both components, which may or may not be located in the same network.

Master-slave

This is another distributed approach, where the master component has full control over slave ones. While the latter is responsible for handling separate tasks, the first compiles the results to display them. Master-Slave pattern is also used for user interfaces and servers. In both cases the master listens for commands coming either from the user or from clients. When a command is received, a slave is launched to execute the command while the master resumes listening for more commands (such as the “suspend the last command” command).

Pipe filter

In this structure, different components are represented as filters that are used to sort data, which flows through special data pipes. The filters, in turn, represent a chain, which means that the data coming out of one filter goes through the other later. The idea behind this approach is to break down huge processes and components into smaller ones.

Broker

The broker pattern comprises three main components – brokers, clients, and servers. The approach can be used to structure distributed systems with decoupled components. The broker acts as coordinator, establishing communications between various components in the app.

Peer-to-peer

All individual components in this structure are called peers. They can act as clients, servers, or even both of them. Client peers request services, while server peers provide services to others. Such an approach is widely used in various file-sharing networks. In peer-to-peer networks, resources such as processing power, storage or bandwidth are made available directly to network participants without requiring central coordination. Contrary to the traditional client-server model, peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources. The emerging collaborative P2P system goes beyond a simple peer-to-peer service. Virtual communities are becoming more powerful with peers that bring unique resources and capabilities, providing services that go beyond what individual peers can provide, but are beneficial to all.

Event-bus

This is an event-driven architectural pattern with distributed asynchronous design. It allows developers to create scalable solutions. The pattern can be used for all types of applications from small ones to complex solutions.

Model-view-controller

The model-view-controller pattern or MVC allows teams to break up the front-end and back-end parts of the code and to put them into different components. It simplifies the management of the whole code and makes it easier to adjust each part of the solution (backend and frontend) separately.

Model: A model contains the core functionality and data.

View: View displays the information to the user.

Controller: Controllers handle the input from the user.

Blackboard

By implementing such a pattern, teams can use the idea of blackboard to store global data. The blackboard can be updated by the knowledge source. The idea behind this architecture is that the control with multiple sources interacts with the blackboard. It goes through various sources and once it finds a solution, the control posts it.

Generally speaking, the Blackboard pattern involves three components:

A shared space for storing data about the world (Blackboard).
A set of algorithms (ML or otherwise) that read data from the world and post results to Blackboard.
A set of modules that read Blackboard results and make adjustments to the robot accordingly.

Interpreter

Simply put, this architecture pattern defines the grammar of a language to be evaluated by the interpreter later. By utilizing this design, developers can technically use a regular expression, or even parse any human language and run the interpretation. As part of this pattern, an expression interface is implemented which tells the interpreter to interpret a particular context.

This pattern is used in SQL parsing, symbol processing engine etc.
An expression hierarchy is used to perform this pattern. There are two types of expressions here: terminals and non-terminals.
Interpreter design patterns have a tree structure similar to the composite design pattern with terminal expressions representing leaves and non-terminal expressions representing composites.
A parser generates the tree of expressions that need to be evaluated. The parser cannot be considered a part of the interpreter pattern.

Bottom line

By taking a close look at the technology that can provide development teams with a means to boost productivity, lead engineers can be able to identify serious team composition problems. As a result, they can create appropriate training programs and facilitate their company’s long-term growth. At Innowise, our seasoned engineers are experts in adopting the best architectural approaches to software development.

Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions, and we would be happy to assist you with your dream project.

FAQ

How do I choose the right software pattern for my project?

Choosing the right software pattern depends on several factors, including the project’s complexity, scalability requirements, and your team’s familiarity with the pattern. Conduct a thorough analysis before making a decision.

What is the role of architecture in software security?

The architecture of your software can significantly impact its security. A well-designed architecture can help prevent vulnerabilities and mitigate potential threats.

How do cloud-native architectures differ from traditional ones?

Cloud-native architectures are specifically designed to leverage the capabilities of cloud platforms. They prioritize scalability, flexibility, and resilience, making them well-suited for cloud environments.

What are some upcoming trends in software architecture?

Some emerging trends include the adoption of serverless architecture, edge computing, and the continued growth of microservices.

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Dmitry Nazarevich CTO

Date: Nov 16, 2022

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10 software architecture patterns you should know about

What is software architecture pattern?

How important are software architecture patterns?