Software Architect's Handbook

Summary

Software architecture is the structure or structures of a system, their elements, and the relationships between those elements. It is an abstraction of a software system. Software architecture is important because all software systems have an architecture, and that architecture is the foundation for the software system.

Software architecture provides a number of benefits, such as enabling and inhibiting quality attributes, allowing you to predict software system qualities, easing communication with stakeholders, and allowing you to more easily make changes. It also provides a reusable model that could be used in multiple software products, imposes implementation constraints that reduce complexity and minimizes developer errors, improves ...