Question

The software that is built for computer-based systems exhibit one of many architectural styles. What do these styles represent?

Answer 1

Software architecture is described as the organization of a system, where the system represents a set of components that accomplish the defined functions.

The architectural styles are also called as architectural pattern and they are a set of principles which shapes an application. It defines an abstract framework for a family of system in terms of the pattern of structural organization.

They define a group of interlinked systems that share structural and semantic properties and the objective of using architectural styles is to establish a structure for all the components present in a system. If an existing architecture is to be re-engineered, then imposition of an architectural style results in fundamental changes in the structure of the system. This change also includes re-assignment of the functionality performed by the components.

By applying certain constraints on the design space, we can make different style-specific analysis from an architectural style. In addition, if conventional structures are used for an architectural style, the other stakeholders can easily understand the organization of the system.

A computer-based system exhibits one of the many available architectural styles. Every architectural style describes a system category that includes the following.

1. Computational components such as clients, server, filter, and database to execute the desired system function.
2. A set of connectors such as procedure call, events broadcast, database protocols, and pipes to provide communication among the computational components.
3. Constraints to define integration of components to form a system.
4. A semantic model, which enable the software designer to identify the characteristics of the system as a whole by studying the characteristics of its components.

Some of the commonly used architectural styles are

• data-flow architecture
• object oriented architecture
• layered system architecture
• data-centered architecture
• call and return architecture.

​The use of an appropriate architectural style promotes design reuse, leads to code reuse, and supports interoperability.