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Franck Mercado
Franck Mercado

Posted on • Updated on

Software Architecture and Software Design

Based on both key definitions, software architecture and software design, we can lay down an organization of software principles, methodologies and patterns currently applied in modern software development and technology innovations.

Software Architecture

It's a high level blueprint for a system.
It defines the structural elements like subsystems, roles, relationships and responsibilities meaning it lays down the architecture style, patterns that will guide the software design.
Software architecture directly deals with arranging this elements like servers, databases, APIs, clients or users of the software application, etc in order to fulfill business requirements.

Software Design

Implies decisions at a lower level of detail as it provides an implementation plans for the laid out architecture.
Software designers will decide on the specifications, contracts used in these subsystems that later software engineers will implement.


Organization of software principles, methodologies and patterns

Index of software concepts:

  1. Software architecture style
  2. Software architecture patterns
  3. Software design methodologies
  4. Software design patterns
  5. Programming paradigms
  6. Clean code principles

1. Software Architecture Style

Based on Structure (separation of concerns)

  • Layered architecture (N-tier)
  • Hexagonal architecture (Ports & Adapters)

Based on distribution of the application

  • Monolith architecture
  • Microservices architecture
    • Microservices patterns

Events based

  • Event Driven architecture

Cloud based

  • Serverless architecture

Network based

  • REST over HTTP

2. Software Architecture Patterns

Based on data management

  • Database per Service
  • Shared database
  • CQRS
  • Domain event
  • Event sourcing

Based on transactional messaging

  • Transactional outbox

Based on security

  • Access tokens
  • Oauth
  • Session

Based on observability

  • Log aggregation
  • Application metrics
  • Exception tracking
  • Health check API

3. Software Design Methodologies

  • Domain Driven Design (DDD)
  • Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
  • Test Driven Development (TDD)

4. Software Design Patterns

  • Creational Patterns
  • Structural Patterns
  • Behavioral Patterns

Expand on software design patterns

5. Programming Paradigms

  • Object Oriented Programming (OOP)
    • Composition over inheritance
    • SOLID
      • Single-responsiblity Principle
      • Open-closed Principle
      • Liskov Substitution Principle
      • Interface Segregation Principle
      • Dependency Inversion Principle
  • Functional Programming

6. Basic principles

  • Clean Code
  • DRY: Don't repeat yourself
  • KISS: Keep it stupid simple
  • YAGNI: You aren't going to need it

Take into account that all these architectural principles, methodologies and patterns are no substitute for making your own decisions. You need to balance them according to business requirements of your software application.

Top comments (1)

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Zara Nuzha

Please Sir/Madam fill out the form and share if you have expert colleagues .I am doing MS from Peshawar University and conducting research on " Software Ecosystem Architecture . This questionnaire has been designed to elicit your response. it will not take more than 5 minutes of yours.
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