An Explanation About Software Architecture and Software Design

According to the website Statista, IT services market revenue is projected to reach $1,114 billion in 2022.

The largest market segment is IT outsourcing, with a projected market size of US$395 billion in 2022. Informational technologies are still the fastest growing and most demanded industry in today’s market.

Building software is a complex process with many different parts. Among them is the development of software architecture and design. Sometimes these two critical phases of software development are confused with each other. This confusion can lead to misunderstandings that can jeopardize the entire development process.

Today we will look at the difference between architecture and software design.

Software architecture

The software architecture is focused on the high-level infrastructure of the software system. It makes the system flexible and scalable. Software architecture aims to make fundamental structural choices to meet business and technical requirements. Therefore, the choice made in the software architecture is essential and should be carefully considered. It would be too costly to change after the system has been implemented.

There are many architectural styles or patterns to accomplish these tasks. Through these architectural patterns, it is possible to create groups that will be reused, giving rise to specific design decisions or constraints that will lead to the desired result.

Some architectural patterns include the following:

• Client-server (n-tier architecture for example)
• Event-driven
• Layered
• Microservices
• Pipes and filters
• Service-oriented

Once you’ve completed the architecture, developers can use it to guide final software design decisions before they start writing any code.

Software design

Software design comes right after software architecture and before programming. The output of software design is often a plan for implementing tasks such as coding, testing, integration, and deployment.

At this point, experienced software developers will consider design considerations. These principles focus on the goals that must be achieved, considering the wishes of all parties. For example:

• Expandability
• Modularity of parts
• Reliability of the whole system
• Reusability
• Improved performance
• Scalability

Design Principles in Software Architecture

It is clear to any developer that creating software is not an easy task. Fragile code leads to bugs that can be very costly to fix. Still, in the event of any failure or unexpected performance, they are propagated to organizations and enterprises. That is why design principles come in handy for designing efficient, clean, and high-quality systems.

Forbes writes that the creation of low-fidelity prototypes is a conceptual approach so that the result is predictable.

Conclusion

So we understand that software architecture is fundamental and different from system design.

These design principles in architecture and design help us design and build fault-tolerant systems, less error-prone, cost-effective, and efficient.

It may seem that following these principles of design and architecture compatibility in development can be difficult. However, your development will benefit much more if you can apply these principles as it is intended organically.

In any case, you can also contact MLSDev – software development company, to order software development that uses harmonious design and architecture principles.