Different architectural styles

This chapter describes and discusses high level patterns and principles commonly used for applications today. These are often referred to as the architectural styles, and include patterns such as client/server, layered architecture, component-based architecture, message bus architecture, and service-oriented architecture (SOA). For each style, you will find an overview, key principles, major benefits, and information that will help you choose the appropriate architectural styles for your application. It is important to understand that the styles describe different aspects of applications. For example, some architectural styles describe deployment patterns, some describe structure and design issues, and others describe communication factors. Therefore, a typical application will usually use a combination of more than one of the styles described in this chapter.

An architectural style, sometimes called an architectural pattern, is a set of principles—a coarse grained pattern that provides an abstract framework for a family of systems. An architectural style improves partitioning and promotes design reuse by providing solutions to frequently recurring problems. You can think of architecture styles and patterns as sets of principles that shape an application. Garlan and Shaw define an architectural style as:

“&#2026a; family of systems in terms of a pattern of structural organization. More specifically, an architectural style determines the vocabulary of components and connectors that can be used in instances of that style, together with a set of constraints on how they can be combined. These can include topological constraints on architectural descriptions (e.g., no cycles). Other constraints—say, having to do with execution semantics—might also be part of the style definition.”

[David Garlan and Mary Shaw, January 1994, CMU-CS-94-166, see "An Introduction to Software Architecture" at ]

An understanding of architectural styles provides several benefits. The most important benefit is that they provide a common language. They also provide opportunities for conversations that are technology agnostic. This facilitates a higher level of conversation that is inclusive of patterns and principles, without getting into specifics. For example, by using architecture styles, you can talk about client/server versus n-tier. Architectural styles can be organized by their key focus area. The following table lists the major areas of focus and the corresponding architectural styles.

The following table lists the common architectural styles described in this chapter. It also contains a brief description of each style. Later sections of this chapter contain more details of each style, as well as guidance to help you choose the appropriate ones for your application.