Essential Software Architecture Paperback – 8 Oct. 2014

This book begins by defining what software architecture is - a term that can be mean different things to different people and different organisations. It then defines and explains all key non-functional requirements (performance, scalability, security etc) things that I think everyone would agree are very important in software architecture. It then explains various architectural approaches used in enterprise systems. This includes web services, message orientated systems, model driven architecture, aspect orientated architectures. There is also a case study which shows how some of concepts described can be applied.My favourie part was on message orientated architectures. All the fundamental and sophisticated aspects are very explained. These include: the asychronous nature of it, the way you can cluster message ques and brokers, the hierachial naming formats in publish subscribe message topics and the different approaches to reliability (best effort, persistent and transactional). There was also some really good discussion regarding the background and importance of message brokers.As well as technical concepts there are also some interesting sections on architectural processes, documentation and even my old favourite UML.This book serves as a very good reminder to the importance of software architecture - especially in enterprise systems. Architectural approaches don't just need to be properly understood, they need to be compared with other approaches especially with respect to the non-functional requirements that are important to your system.

The book constantly name drops Java technologies and concerns itself with server architectures. As I write stand-alone C++ applications and know neither Java nor server stuff this is next to useless to me. The chapter on quality attributes was good though probably not general enough.In this context I don't understand either the description or the three previous reviews. Am returning this, luckily I also bought Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach at the same time so I do have some idea of modern formal software architecture when it comes to report writing in the new job.