Software Architect

The software architects are those professionals who articulate the architectural view of software.
They should have strong knowledge in their organizations products and various technologies.
They are responsible for structuring the development process of the software. A software
architect may work in different platforms. They experiment the structure of different tasks using
various architectural technologies and creates model of the software. Their work also includes
preparation of documents and explaining the architectural views to the required clients. They
work in teams with the developers to create software. They must have thorough knowledge in
any language platform they wish to work on. Most of these jobs require experience in the same
field. The career opportunities are also at bright side for these professionals.

Software Engineer

Software engineers are the professionals who are responsible for the development of software
using their knowledge in various software languages. These include the designing, coding and
implementation. They need a strong basis in coding languages. They work in the application side
of the software. Their duties include the development of high quality, maintainable and
affordable solutions to different tasks as required by their clients. It is a systematic approach to
the development of solutions and involves the analysis, design, evaluation, execution, testing,
maintenance and modification of software. To get into these jobs one need a minimum
qualification of bachelor’s degree in computer science. A deep knowledge in any of the coding
languages, they wish to work on; will be more helpful for them to grasp their work.

Key differentiators between Software Architect and Software Engineer

 Software architects are the professionals who develop the overall structure of software
whereas a software engineer does its coding and modifications.
 Software architects have to communicate with the clients to understand about their
requirements whereas a software engineer only works for what an architect instructs
them.

Although a software architect and software engineer work in the same area, the nature of work
they do is quite different.
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Introduction[edit]

When you build your house, you would never think about building it without an architect,
correct? However, many medium to large size software projects are build without a software
architect. That seems kind of scary, and you might wonder why? Well, the role of the software
architect has neither been widely understood, nor his necessity been acknowledged. Even to date
there is still no agreement on the precise definition of the term “software architecture”.[1]

Matthew R. McBride writes, "a software architect is a technically competent system-level

thinker, guiding planned and efficient design processes to bring a system into existence. He is
viewed by customers and developers alike as a technical expert. The architect is the author of the
solution, accountable for its success or failure." [2] The term software architecture also refers to
documentation of a system's software architecture. Documenting software architecture facilitates
communication between stakeholders, documents early decisions about high-level design, and
allows reuse of design components and patterns between projects.[3]

Architecture and Design[edit]

Software architecture, also described as strategic design, is an activity concerned with global
requirements governing how a solution is implemented such as programming paradigms,
architectural styles, component-based software engineering standards, architectural patterns,
security, scale, integration, and law-governed regularities. Functional design, also described as
tactical design, is an activity concerned with local requirements governing what a solution does
such as algorithms, design patterns, programming idioms, refactorings, and low-level
implementation.

Architecture is design but not all design is architectural.[4] In practice, the architect is the one
who draws the line between software architecture (architectural design) and detailed design (non-
architectural design). There aren't rules or guidelines that fit all cases. Examples of rules or
heuristics that architects (or organizations) can establish when they want to distinguish between
architecture and detailed design include:

 Architecture is driven by non-functional requirements, while functional design is driven by

functional requirements.
 Pseudo-code belongs in the detailed design document.
 UML component, deployment, and package diagrams generally appear in software
architecture documents; UML class, object, and behavior diagrams appear in detailed
functional design documents.

Software Architecture[edit]

The field of computer science has come across problems associated with complexity since its
formation.[5] Earlier problems of complexity were solved by developers by choosing the right
data structures, developing algorithms, and by applying the concept of separation of concerns.
Although the term “software architecture” is relatively new to the industry, the fundamental
principles of the field have been applied sporadically by software engineering pioneers since the
mid 1980s. Early attempts to capture and explain software architecture of a system were
imprecise and disorganized, often characterized by a set of box-and-line diagrams.[6] During the
1990s there was a concentrated effort to define and codify fundamental aspects of the discipline.
Initial sets of design patterns, styles, best practices, description languages, and formal logic were
developed during that time.

As a maturing discipline with no clear rules on the right way to build a system, designing
software architecture is still a mix of art and science. The “art” aspect of software architecture is
because a commercial software system supports some aspect of a business or a mission. How a
system supports key business drivers is described via scenarios as non-functional requirements of
a system, also known as quality attributes, determine how a system will behave.[7] Every system
is unique due to the nature of the business drivers it supports, as such the degree of quality
attributes exhibited by a system such as fault-tolerance, backward compatibility, extensibility,
reliability, maintainability, availability, security, usability, and such other –ilities will vary with
each implementation.[7]

The origin of software architecture as a concept was first identified in the research work of
Edsger Dijkstra in 1968 and David Parnas in the early 1970s. These scientists emphasized that
the structure of a software system matters and getting the structure right is critical. The study of
the field increased in popularity since the early 1990s with research work concentrating on
architectural styles (patterns), architecture description languages, architecture documentation,
and formal methods[8].

Views and UML[edit]

Although there exist 'architecture description languages' (see below), no consensus exists on
which symbol-set or language should be used. However, as already indicated above, UML is a
standard used regularly by architects. For instance, UML component, deployment, and package
diagrams generally appear in software architecture documents. Thus, the UML is a visual
language that is often being used to create software architecture views.

Software architecture views are analogous to the different types of blueprints made in building
architecture. A view is a representation of a set of system components and relationships among
them. [4] Some possible views are:

 Functional/logic view
 Code/module view
 Development/structural view
 Concurrency/process/runtime/thread view
 Physical/deployment/install view
 User action/feedback view
 Data view/data model
Architecture Frameworks[edit]
There are several architecture frameworks related to the domain of software architecture, most
well known being the '4+1' model. Also the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing
(RM-ODP) and the Service-Oriented Modeling Framework (SOMF) are being used. Other
architectures such as the Zachman Framework, DODAF, and TOGAF relate to the field of
Enterprise architecture.

Architecture Description Languages[edit]

Several languages for describing software architectures ('architecture description language'
(ADL) in ISO/IEC 42010 / IEEE-1471 terminology) have been devised. ADLs are used to
describe a Software Architecture. Several different ADLs have been developed by different
organizations, including AADL (SAE standard), Wright (developed by Carnegie Mellon), Acme
(developed by Carnegie Mellon), xADL (developed by UCI), Darwin (developed by Imperial
College London), DAOP-ADL (developed by University of Málaga), and ByADL (University of
L'Aquila, Italy). Common elements of an ADL are component, connector and configuration.