Lecture 6 se

Chapter- 6
Architectural Design
Prepared by
Asst. Prof. Bal Krishna Subedi
Tribhuvan University
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Topics covered
 Architectural design decisions
 Architectural views
 Architectural patterns
 Application architectures
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Software architecture
 The design process for identifying the sub-systems
making up a system and the framework for sub-system
control and communication is architectural design.
 The output of this design process is a description of the
software architecture.
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Chapter 6 Architectural design
Architectural design
 An early stage of the system design process.
 Represents the link between specification and design
processes.
 The most important part of design. critically important
 Unifies oth types of design (coming)
 Often carried out in parallel with some specification
activities.
 It involves identifying major system components and
their communications.
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The architecture of a packing robot
control system
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Architectural abstraction
 Architecture in the small is concerned with the
architecture of individual programs.
 At this level, we are concerned with the way that an
individual program is decomposed into components.
 Architecture in the large is concerned with the
architecture of complex enterprise systems that include
other systems, programs, and program components.
These enterprise systems are distributed over different
computers, which may be owned and managed by
different companies.
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Architectural representations
 Simple, informal block diagrams showing entities and
relationships are the most frequently used method for
documenting software architectures.
 But these have been criticized because they lack
semantics, do not show the types of relationships
between entities nor the visible properties of entities in
the architecture.
 Depends on the use of architectural models. The
requirements for model semantics depends on how the
models are used.
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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.
 Stakeholders can relate to it and understand an
abstract view of the system
 They can then discuss the system as a whole without
being confused by 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
 Architectural design is a creative process so the process
differs depending on the type of system being
developed.
 However, a number of common decisions span all design
processes and these decisions affect the non-functional
characteristics of the system.
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Architectural design decisions
 Is there a generic application architecture that can be
used?
 How will the system be distributed?
 What architectural styles are appropriate?
 What approach will be used to structure the system?
 How will the system be decomposed into modules?
 What control strategy should be used?
 How will the architectural design be evaluated?
 How should the architecture be documented?
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Architecture reuse
 Systems in the same domain often have similar
architectures that reflect domain concepts.
 Application product lines are built around a core
architecture with variants that satisfy particular
customer requirements.
 The architecture of a system may be designed
around one of more architectural patterns or
‘styles’.
 These capture the essence of an architecture and
can be instantiated in different ways.
 Discussed later in this lecture.
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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.
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Architectural views
 What views or perspectives are useful when designing
and documenting a system’s architecture?
 What notations should be used for describing
architectural models?
 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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4 + 1 view model of software architecture
 A logical view, which shows 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.
 A development view, which shows how the software is
decomposed for development.
 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)
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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 the are not useful.
 Patterns may be represented using tabular and
graphical descriptions.
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The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern
Name MVC (Model-View-Controller)
Description Separates presentation and interaction from the system data. The system
is structured into three logical components that interact with each other.
The Model component manages the system data and associated
operations on that data. The View component defines and manages how
the data is presented to the user. The Controller component manages
user interaction (e.g., key presses, mouse clicks, etc.) and passes these
interactions to the View and the Model. See Figure 6.3.
Example Figure 6.4 shows the architecture of a web-based application system
organized using the MVC pattern.
When used Used when there are multiple ways to view and interact with data. Also
used when the future requirements for interaction and presentation of
data are unknown.
Advantages Allows the data to change independently of its representation and vice
versa. Supports presentation of the same data in different ways with
changes made in one representation shown in all of them.
Disadvantages Can involve additional code and code complexity when the data model
and interactions are simple.
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The organization of the Model-View-
Controller
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Web application architecture using the
MVC pattern
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Layered architecture
 Used to model the interfacing of sub-systems.
 Organizes the system into a set of layers (or abstract
machines) each of which provide a set of services.
 Supports the incremental development of sub-systems in
different layers. When a layer interface changes, only
the adjacent layer is affected.
 However, often artificial to structure systems in this way.
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The Layered architecture pattern
Name Layered architecture
Description Organizes the system into layers with related functionality associated
with each layer. A layer provides services to the layer above it so the
lowest-level layers represent core services that are likely to be used
throughout the system. See Figure 6.6.
Example A layered model of a system for sharing copyright documents held in
different libraries, as shown in Figure 6.7.
When used Used when building new facilities on top of existing systems; when
the development is spread across several teams with each team
responsibility for a layer of functionality; when there is a requirement
for multi-level security.
Advantages Allows replacement of entire layers so long as the interface is
maintained. Redundant facilities (e.g., authentication) can be provided
in each layer to increase the dependability of the system.
Disadvantages In practice, providing a clean separation between layers is often
difficult and a high-level layer may have to interact directly with lower-
level layers rather than through the layer immediately below it.
Performance can be a problem because of multiple levels of
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• A generic layered
architecture
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The architecture of the LIBSYS system
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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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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 organizing 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-centered 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
 Focus here is on transaction processing and
language processing systems.
 Will look at two types....
 Transaction processing systems
 E-commerce systems;
 Reservation systems.
 Language processing systems
 Compilers;
 Command interpreters.
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a. 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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The structure of transaction processing
applications
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The 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 MHC-PMS
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b. 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
 Meta-case tools process tool descriptions,
method rules, etc and generate tools.
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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 pipe and filter compiler architecture
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A repository architecture for a language
processing system
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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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Lecture 6 se

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