Software Architecture in Practice

This award-winning book, substantially updated to reflect the latest developments in the field, introduces the concepts and best practices of software architecture--how a software system is structured and how that system's elements are meant to interact. Distinct from the details of implementation, algorithm, and data representation, an architecture holds the key to achieving system quality, is a reusable asset that can be applied to subsequent systems, and is crucial to a software organization's business strategy.

Drawing on their own extensive experience, the authors cover the essential technical topics for designing, specifying, and validating a system. They also emphasize the importance of the business context in which large systems are designed. Their aim is to present software architecture in a real-world setting, reflecting both the opportunities and constraints that companies encounter. To that end, case studies that describe successful architectures illustrate key points of both technical and organizational discussions.

Topics new to this edition include:

• Architecture design and analysis, including the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM)
• Capturing quality requirements and achieving them through quality scenarios and tactics
• Using architecture reconstruction to recover undocumented architectures
• Documenting architectures using the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
• New case studies, including Web-based examples and a wireless Enterprise JavaBeans™ (EJB) system designed to support wearable computers
• The financial aspects of architectures, including use of the Cost Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM) to make decisions

If you design, develop, or manage the building of large software systems (or plan to do so), or if you are interested in acquiring such systems for your corporation or government agency, use Software Architecture in Practice, Second Edition, to get up to speed on the current state of software architecture.

Len Bass is a senior member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). He has written or edited five books and numerous papers on software engineering and other topics. He has extensive experience in architecting real-world development projects.

Paul Clements is a senior member of the technical staff at the SEI, where he works on software architecture and product line engineering. He is the author of five books and more than three dozen papers on these and other topics.

Rick Kazman is a senior member of the technical staff at the SEI. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of two books, editor of two more, and has written more than seventy papers on software engineering and related topics.