February 2009
Beginner
222 pages
5h 23m
English
Content preview from 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know
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Chapter 66. If There Is Only One Solution, Get a Second Opinion
Timothy High is a software architect with more than 15 years' experience with web, multitiered client-server, and application-integration technologies. He is currently working as a software architect for Sakonnet Technologies, a leader in Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) software.
—Timothy High
YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD THIS SAID BEFORE. If you're an experienced architect, you know it's true: if you can only think of one solution to a problem, you're in trouble.
Software architecture is about finding the best possible solution for a problem given any number of constraints. It is rarely possible to satisfy all requirements and constraints with the first solution that comes to mind. Generally, tradeoffs must be made by choosing the solution that best satisfies the requirements according to the most critical priorities.
If you only have one solution to the problem at hand, it means that you will have no room to negotiate these tradeoffs. It's very possible that this one solution will be insatisfactory to the stakeholders of your system. It also means that if priorities are shifted due to a changing business environment, your system may have no room to adapt to new requirements.
Rarely, if ever, is this situation caused by a real lack of options. It is much more likely due to the inexperience of the architect in this particular ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.