Chapter 6 – Architectural Design

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 1

Topics covered

 Architectural design decisions

 Architectural views
 Architectural patterns
 Application architectures

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 2

Architectural design

 Architectural design is concerned with understanding

how a software system should be organized and
designing the overall structure of that system.
 Architectural design is the critical link between design
and requirements engineering, as it identifies the main
structural components in a system and the relationships
between them.
 The output of the architectural design process is an
architectural model that describes how the system is
organized as a set of communicating components.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 3

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

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 4

The architecture of a packing robot control
system

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 5

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 6

Advantages of explicit architecture

 Stakeholder communication
 Architecture may be used as a focus of discussion by system
stakeholders.
 System analysis
 Means that analysis of whether the system can meet its non-
functional requirements is possible.
 Large-scale reuse
An architectural model is a compact, manageable description
of how a system is organized and how the components
interoperate.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 7

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 8

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 9

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 10

 Architectural design decisions

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 11

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 12

Architectural design decisions

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 13

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 14

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.
27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 15
Architectural conflicts
 Architectural views

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 17

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 18

Architectural views

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 19

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)

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 20

4+1 View Model of Architecture

End user Development Programmers

Logical view & software
view
managers

Scenarios

Process View Physical View

Integrator System Engineer

21
Logical View
Viewer: End-user

considers: Functional requirements- What the system

should provide in terms of services to its users.

The logical view is concerned with the functionality that the

system provides to end-users. UML Diagrams used to
represent the logical view include Class diagram,
Communication diagram, Sequence diagram.

22
Process View

(The process decomposition)

viewer: Integrators

considers: Non - functional requirements (concurrency,

performance, scalability)

23
Development View

(Subsystem decomposition)

Viewer: Programmers and Software Managers

considers: software module organization

(Hierarchy of Components, software
management, reuse, constraints of tools)

24
Physical View
(Mapping the software to the Hardware)

Viewer: System Engineers

Considers: Non-functional req. regarding to underlying

hardware (Topology, Communication)
May Tightly connected to the process view

25
Architecture Vs. Design

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 26

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 27

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 28

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 29
Web application architecture using the MVC
pattern

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 30

Layered architecture

 Used to model the interfacing of sub-systems.

 Organises 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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 31

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 interpretation of a service request as it is processed at
each layer.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 32

A generic layered architecture

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 33

The architecture of the iLearn system

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 34

The architecture of the Mentcare System

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 35

Client-server architecture

 Distributed system model which shows how data and

processing is distributed across a range of components.
 Can be implemented on a single computer.
 Set of stand-alone servers which provide specific
services such as printing, data management, etc.
 Set of clients which call on these services.
 Network which allows clients to access servers.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 36

The Client–server pattern

Name Client-server

Description In a client–server architecture, the functionality of the system is

organized into services, with each service delivered from a
separate server. Clients are users of these services and access
servers to make use of them.
Example Figure 6.11 is an example of a film and video/DVD library
organized as a client–server system.
When used Used when data in a shared database has to be accessed from a
range of locations. Because servers can be replicated, may also
be used when the load on a system is variable.
Advantages The principal advantage of this model is that servers can be
distributed across a network. General functionality (e.g., a printing
service) can be available to all clients and does not need to be
implemented by all services.
Disadvantages Each service is a single point of failure so susceptible to denial of
service attacks or server failure. Performance may be
unpredictable because it depends on the network as well as the
system. May be management problems if servers are owned by
different organizations.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 37

A client–server architecture for a film library

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 38

Pipe and filter architecture

 Functional transformations process their inputs to

produce outputs.
 May be referred to as a pipe and filter model (as in UNIX
shell).
 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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 39

The pipe and filter pattern

Name Pipe and filter

Description The processing of the data in a system is organized so that each

processing component (filter) is discrete and carries out one type of
data transformation. The data flows (as in a pipe) from one component
to another for processing.
Example Figure 6.13 is an example of a pipe and filter system used for
processing invoices.
When used Commonly used in data processing applications (both batch- and
transaction-based) where inputs are processed in separate stages to
generate related outputs.
Advantages Easy to understand and supports transformation reuse. Workflow style
matches the structure of many business processes. Evolution by
adding transformations is straightforward. Can be implemented as
either a sequential or concurrent system.
Disadvantages The format for data transfer has to be agreed upon between
communicating transformations. Each transformation must parse its
input and unparse its output to the agreed form. This increases
system overhead and may mean that it is impossible to reuse
functional transformations that use incompatible data structures.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 40

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

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 41

 Application architectures

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 42

Application architectures

 Application systems are designed to meet an

organisational 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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 43

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.
27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 44
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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 45

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.

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 46

The structure of transaction processing
applications

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 47

The software architecture of an ATM system

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 48

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

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 49

Layered information system architecture

27/01/2025 Chapter 6 Architectural Design 50