Software Architecture in Practice, Second Edition

Part One. Envisioning Architecture

Where do architectures come from? They spring from the minds of architects, of course, but how? What must go into the mind of an architect for an architecture to come out? For that matter, what is a software architecture? Is it the same as design? If so, what's the fuss? If it's different, how so and why is it important?

In Part One, we focus on the forces and influences that are at work as the architect begins creating—envisioning—the central artifact of a system whose influences persist beyond the lifetime of the system. Whereas we often think of design as taking the right steps to ensure that the system will perform as expected—produce the correct answer or provide the expected functionality—architecture ...