Software Design Methodology

4 Software Architecture

This chapter introduces the notion of software architecture and architectural styles

and discusses its role in software design. The objectives of the chapter are:

y To understand the general concept of architecture;

y To understand different views to the concept of software architecture;

y To understand the notion of software architectural styles;

y To understand the roles of software architecture and architectural styles in

software design.

This chapter is organised as follows. Section 4.1 examines the general notion

of architecture in other disciplines, which include buildings and computer

hardware. Section 4.2 presents the most influential models of software architecture

in the literature and discusses the roles of software architecture in software design.

Section 4.3 introduces the notion of software architectural styles.