Top 5 Software Architecture Patterns

Did you know that every large-scale, successful enterprise software has one thing in common? This mascot ensures that the software is able to communicate well with its counterparts, survive load, scale resources, and never let the application go down.

Yes, you guessed it right. We are talking about software architecture patterns!

A software architecture lays down the basis for development. Thus, choosing the right architecture at the inception stage is important. It allows us to take the application to the next level as it moves towards success.

If you’re planning to build the next big thing in the software industry, then we recommend you to have a look at these top software architecture patterns that will ascertain that your product never fails to scale, communicate, and survive, even in the toughest of scenarios.

1. Layered Architecture

Layered architecture, also known as n-tier architecture is one of the most commonly used patterns for software development. The code in an n-tier pattern is arranged in layers. The data enters the system through the outermost layer (UI) and reaches the innermost layer (database). There are four layers in layered software architecture:

• Presentation layer (UI layer)
• Application layer (service layer)
• Business logic layer (domain layer)
• Data access layer (persistence layer)

There are at least three layers in a basic application: The presentation layer, which the user access through the GUI, the application layer that runs the business logic, and the data layer that stores and retrieves data. Since the layers are independent, it becomes easy to manage the infrastructure and thus build large-scale applications on it. Some of the popular and biggest software frameworks- Drupal, Express, Java EE are built using this architecture.

Caveats:

While building software using this architecture, remember that the code can become a mess if the roles and relationships are not clearly defined. In such an architecture, monolithic deployment is unavoidable, which means a small change in the code calls for application deployment.

2. Microservices Architecture

There are no heights to the growth of a software application. That is why it is important to ensure that a solution does not become inflexible and monolithic. A microservices architecture just ensures that.

Microservices is a modular architecture that divides software services into small, independent modules. Because the services are independent of each other, such architecture offers fault isolation capability, which means a fault in service will not affect another.

One of the best examples of software with such architecture is an eCommerce app where every individual process is a service. Search, recommendations to the shopper, payments. Everything is a service. Some of the tech giants such as Amazon, Netflix, Soundcloud use the microservices architecture to keep their solutions scalable and frequently updated.

Microservices architecture is best suited for an application if the development teams are spread out, or the business introduces frequent changes for the customers or the website/app has small components.

Caveats:

The architecture can’t be adopted for every application. This is because not every application has tasks that can be split into small, independent tasks. And for an application to adopt microservices, the services must be largely independent.

3. Event-Driven Architecture

An event is used to capture, communicate, and process services in an event-driven architecture in a loosely coupled application. An event can be a significant state change or an update. For example, “an item purchased”, “a notification that the order is shipped”.

This architecture has three major components: Event Producers, Event Routers, and Event Consumers. The producers generate an event, the router filters and push the event to the consumers. In an event-driven architecture, the application services are loosely coupled, which means an application can scale and fail independently.

Caveats:

An event-driven architecture is highly adaptable for a dynamic and scalable development environment. However, testing can become complex in a modular environment if the modules are dependent on each other. Although testing individual modules is easy, verifying interactions between them is possible in a fully functional system. That is why an event-driven architecture is best suited for applications where the individual data blocks have to interact with only a few modules.

4. Serverless Architecture

Serverless architecture is a software design pattern wherein the application logic runs in an environment that is on the top of an Operating System and uses physical servers/virtual machines. The entire infrastructure-software, hardware, server is managed by the service provider. Other than this, serverless is a sought-after architecture amongst the developer community as it allows to scale-up or scale-down the resources, as the requirement strikes.

READ MORE: Benefits of Software Development using Serverless Architecture

Caveats:

The serverless architecture comprises granular functions. Thus, managing several functions can get cumbersome, which, if go unattended can result in mini-monoliths.

5. Space-based Architecture

The space-based architecture is meant to avoid functional collapse by dividing processing and storage load between multiple servers. In this architecture, the applications are composed of self-sufficient units called Processing Units. Since these units are independent of each other, it allows the application to scale as the demand strikes.

The Space-based architecture is closely related to Shared Nothing architecture which is distributed computing architecture and is known to address scalability issues (and is used by Google, Amazon, etc.). This software architecture is suitable for applications that have a large user-base, have a constant load of requests, and are supposed to address scalability & concurrency issues.

Caveats:

For a space-based architecture, it is difficult to build proficiency to cache the data for speed without corrupting the copies.

Choosing the Right Software Architecture:

There is a lot that goes into selecting the right software architecture for the upcoming project. Reliability, performance, security, usability, availability are some of the basics that should be considered while selecting a software architecture. Other than that, defining the futuristic scope of the solution is important.

If a technical aid is required to finalize the right architecture for your project, our software architects can be approached . Our team would assess the project and related factors to recommend the right software architecture.

Originally published at https://insights.daffodilsw.com.