Fundamentals of Software Architecture, 2nd Edition

Chapter 19. Choosing the Appropriate Architecture Style

It depends! With all the choices available (and new ones arriving almost daily), we would like to tell you which architecture style you should use—​but we can’t. Nothing is more contextual to a number of factors within an organization and what software it builds. Choosing an architecture style represents the culmination of a whole process of analysis and thought about trade-offs for architecture characteristics, domain considerations, strategic goals, and a host of other things. That’s why, as we said back in Chapter 2, it depends.

However contextual the decision is, this chapter offers some general advice around choosing an appropriate architecture style.

Shifting “Fashion” in Architecture

The software industry’s preferences in architecture styles shift over time, driven by a number of factors. These include:

Observations from the past

New architecture styles generally arise from observations about past experiences, especially observations about pain points. Architects’ experiences working with systems—which are often what lead us to become architects in the first place—influence our thoughts about future systems. New architecture designs often reflect fixes for the specific deficiencies encountered in past architecture styles. For example, after building architectures that centered on code reuse, architects realized the negative trade-offs and seriously rethought the implications of reusing code.

Changes in the ecosystem ...