What topics fall under architecture?

Question

Hi,

I am an experienced coder. During the time I learnt C#, I followed a set of topics eg serialisation, exception handling, graphics, etc.

However, what topics are there in architecture and software design?

My list contains the concept of roundtrips, tiers, layering, is there anything else?

Thanks

Answer 1

disaster recovery, scalability, caching, throughput, integration, security

These are just a few.

Answer 2

Here you'll find a lot of buzz words topics:

• Design Concepts
• Architectual patterns

Answer 3

At the architectural level we are concerned about:

• Services
• Components
• Security
• Infrastructure
• Backward/forward compatibility (migration, dual phase, etc)
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Federation
• Standards (not necessarily industry standards, just consistency)

Architecture is just as much about non-technical communication and business strategy as it is about anything technical. Architects are responsible for translating business goals into systems, which are implemented by developers and technicians.

As far as your existing list - "tiers" is a high-level development concept, while I would consider "roundtrips" relatively low-level. At an architectural level, and even a high-level software design level, "roundtrips" is an implementation detail of the communication between systems, and is not very interesting until it starts impacting one of the areas listed above. I'm not sure what you mean by "layering".

Answer 4

Although the list is exhastive, I tried to cover most basic points:

• Functional requirements
• Non-functional requirements
• Architectural patterns
• Architecture models
• Design patterns
• Anti-patterns
• Application security