Software Architecture in Practice, Second Edition

Part Three. Analyzing Architectures

Our tour of the ABC has gotten us to the stage where an architect has designed and documented an architecture. This leads us to discuss how to evaluate or to analyze the architecture to make sure it is the one that will do the job. That is the focus of Part Three, which we begin by answering some basic questions about architectural evaluations—why, when, cost, benefits, techniques, planned or unplanned, preconditions, and results.

Why

One of the most important truths about the architecture of a system is that knowing it will tell you important properties of the system itself—even if the system does not yet exist. Architects make design decisions because of the downstream effects they will have on ...