design and development

A great book on basic architectural patterns. The authors did a fine job of codifying the essence of architecture you have probably seen in practice (much like Gamma, et al did with design patterns. Great for telling your clueless boss what architecture is.

This book is often cited as one of the seminal references on software architecture. The first chapter explains how software architecture fits into the developing field of software engineering. The second chapter illustrates common architectural styles such as pipes and filters, object-oriented organization, event-based invocation, layered systems, repositories, interpreters, process control, distributed process, main program/subroutine, blackboard, and state transition. Case studies are used to compare and contrast the selection of different architectural solutions. The case studies are key word in context, instrumentation software, mobile robotics, cruise control, three vignettes using mixed styles, and shared information systems. The final half of the book is focused on academic research such as quantified design space, formal models, formal specifications, Z notation, connector models, automated case tools, Wright Model of architectural description, and education of software architects.

I had very high hopes for this book, but they were all dashed. The first two chapters Introdution and Architectural Styles were a good overview of Software Architecture in general and some of the major architectural styles such as "pipe and filter" which is used in systems such as Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 DTS. Although it was great to read about the different styles, they were treated trivially--not in-depth. The rest of the book has very basic case studies that may be good for a Software Architecture 101 course in junior college--not Carnegie Mellon. I would have loved to have found some more "real world" case studies with UML (which this book does not address).