One of the fundamental styles in software architecture is the pipeline architecture (also known as the pipes and filters architecture). As soon as developers and architects decided to split functionality into discrete parts, this style of architecture followed. Most developers know this architecture as the underlying principle behind Unix terminal shell languages, such as Bash and Zsh.
Developers in many functional programming languages will see parallels between language constructs and elements of this architecture. In fact, many tools that use the MapReduce programming model follow this basic topology. While the examples in this chapter show low-level implementations of the pipeline architecture style, it can also be used for higher-level business applications.
Topology
The topology of the pipeline architecture consists of two main component types, pipes and filters. Filters contain the system functionality and perform a specific business function, and pipes transfer data to the next filter (or filters) in the chain. They coordinate in a specific fashion, with pipes forming one-way, usually point-to-point communication between filters, as illustrated in Figure 12-1.
Figure 12-1. Basic topology for pipeline architecture
The isomorphic “shape” of the pipeline architecture is thus a single deployment unit, with functionality contained within ...
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