Software Architecture in Practice, Third Edition

1. What Is Software Architecture?

Good judgment is usually the result of experience. And experience is frequently the result of bad judgment. But to learn from the experience of others requires those who have the experience to share the knowledge with those who follow.

—Barry LePatner

Writing (on our part) and reading (on your part) a book about software architecture, which distills the experience of many people, presupposes that

1. having a software architecture is important to the successful development of a software system and

2. there is a sufficient, and sufficiently generalizable, body of knowledge about software architecture to fill up a book.

One purpose of this book is to convince you that both of these assumptions are true, and once ...