Product Description

Software Systems Architecture is a practitioner-oriented guide to designing and implementing effective architectures for information systems. It is both a readily accessible introduction to software architecture and an invaluable handbook of well-established best practices. It shows why the role of the architect is central to any successful information-systems development project, and, by presenting a set of architectural viewpoints and perspectives, provides specific direction for improving your own and your organization's approach to software systems architecture.

With this book you will learn how to

• Design an architecture that reflects and balances the different needs of its stakeholders
• Communicate the architecture to stakeholders and demonstrate that it has met their requirements
• Focus on architecturally significant aspects of design, including frequently overlooked areas such as performance, resilience, and location
• Use scenarios and patterns to drive the creation and validation of your architecture
• Document your architecture as a set of related views
• Use perspectives to ensure that your architecture exhibits important qualities such as performance, scalability, and security

The architectural viewpoints and perspectives presented in the book also provide a valuable long-term reference source for new and experienced architects alike.

Whether you are an aspiring or practicing software architect, you will find yourself referring repeatedly to the practical advice in this book throughout the lifecycle of your projects.

A supporting Web site containing further information can be found at www.viewpoints-and-perspectives.info

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #142875 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

From the Back Cover

Software Systems Architecture is a practitioner-oriented guide to designing and implementing effective architectures for information systems. It is both a readily accessible introduction to software architecture and an invaluable handbook of well-established best practices. It shows why the role of the architect is central to any successful information-systems development project, and, by presenting a set of architectural viewpoints and perspectives, provides specific direction for improving your own and your organization's approach to software systems architecture.

With this book you will learn how to

• Design an architecture that reflects and balances the different needs of its stakeholders
• Communicate the architecture to stakeholders and demonstrate that it has met their requirements
• Focus on architecturally significant aspects of design, including frequently overlooked areas such as performance, resilience, and location
• Use scenarios and patterns to drive the creation and validation of your architecture
• Document your architecture as a set of related views
• Use perspectives to ensure that your architecture exhibits important qualities such as performance, scalability, and security

The architectural viewpoints and perspectives presented in the book also provide a valuable long-term reference source for new and experienced architects alike.

Whether you are an aspiring or practicing software architect, you will find yourself referring repeatedly to the practical advice in this book throughout the lifecycle of your projects.

A supporting Web site containing further information can be found at www.viewpoints-and-perspectives.info

About the Author

Nick Rozanski is an enterprise technical architect at Marks and Spencer, where he focuses on integration and workflow. During his more than twenty years of experience he has worked for companies such as Logica, Capgemini, and Sybase. His technology experience covers enterprise application integration, relational databases, and object-oriented software development. He is also an experienced technical instructor and certified internal project auditor.

Eoin Woods is a principal consultant at Züehlke Engineering in London, where he works as a consultant software architect focusing on trading and investment management companies in the financial markets. He has worked in the software engineering field for fifteen years with a number of companies, including Ford Motor Company, Groupe Bull, InterTrust Technologies, and Sybase.

Customer Reviews

Every IT architect should read this book
My reason for buying this book was to hear what the authors had to say about handling cross-cutting architectural concerns (such as security), which they refer to as "perspectives". The authors offer refreshing insights into how such concerns should be interwoven with the architecture views/viewpoints with which many architects will already be familiar when documenting their software architectures.

But now that I've finally finished reading the book (500+ pages) I have to say that this book is so much more. This is essentially a "book of 2 halves". The first half discusses fundamental architecture concepts, and various elements of the architecture process. However, the second half of the book is dedicated to a catalog of viewpoints and a catalog of perspectives. These sections are, I think, the most valuable, and offer probably the best overview of different architectural concerns (such as concurrency, deployment, operations, security, availability etc.) I've come across. And the whole book is liberally sprinkled with pragmatic advice, and examples, based on the authors' experiences.

In summary, the book makes a great "handbook" for both novice and experienced architects.

A very good companion for system architects
This book will serve the new and experienced architects equally. For new architects, it provides an excellent guide to a fairly contemporary world of systems architecture and helps in looking at it from various "viewpoints" and "perspectives" used by the author. This will help enormously in finding a rationale for choice of methods in any part of architecture you are involved in, be it application, data, infrastructure, security, performance & scalability etc. For the experienced ones, it will help in focussing on a particular area and delve into it in more detail. I found the examples cited to be useful and author's usage of structure UML to illustrate the examples. I would also suggest to read the Bass, Clements' book on Documenting software architecture together with this book.

Stop those arguments about what architecture actually is!
Full disclosure: I used to work with Nick and Eoin in Sybase UK's consulting division. One of the ongoing arguments we would always have was, what exactly architecture, when applied to software systems, actually is. So, finally, I have a book that I can point to and say, the stuff that's in there is a pretty good basis for what architecture is for and more importantly how architects should do it. And (please believe me), these two guys definitely know how to do it.

The book builds on the old 4+1 viewpoints stuff, though Nick and Eoin rename some of them for clarity. They've also introduced one further one to end up with 6 in all. Then they've introduced a new concept - perspectives - that serves as a handle for all the cross-cutting stuff, eg security, i18n and so on. So we have a 2-dimensional space of things to think about.

Of course, it's impossible for any architect to fully explore this space before the building must begin, but in this book the authors help show how to prioritize work best to maximise success.

If there's one thing this book skirts around, it is how architecture fits into agile development processes. But if you are an architect who's always bluffed it, or a developer wanting to move into architecture, then I recommend you buy this book.