Top 7 Software Architecture Patterns – How to Choose the Right One

While many people enjoy using the enterprise-level system, not many know how they are designed. In fact, before development even begins, you will have to choose the right architecture that will produce the functionalities that you need. This is why it is crucial to understand all of the various software architecture design patterns before you apply it to your design. In this article, we will take a look at the top seven patterns, so you choose the one that is the right one for your needs. However, before getting into all the details, let’s get a definition of software architecture.    

What is Software Architecture?   

In layman’s terms, software architecture is taking the characteristics of the software and converting it into a structured solution that fulfills your business needs and technical requirements. These characteristics include things like scalability, reusability, flexibility, and many other traits. With this definition in mind, we need to start thinking about the software qualities that can have an impact on the design of the architecture.    

This is very important because a lot of times your product owner will tell you that the business model must be adapted very quickly since the company is trying to compete in an ever-evolving, fast-paced market. In other words, the software needs to be extendable, maintainable, and modular. As a software architect, you understand that to satisfy the business requirements, the architecture must have low fault tolerance, be scalable and reliable to produce the necessary performance. 

Now that you know some of the issues that you will be dealing with, you can start thinking about architecture patterns. These patterns will address issues such as minimizing the business risk, maintaining high availability, and many others. Please keep in mind that the decision on which architecture to use will depend on your unique requirements. Therefore, some custom software programming may be required. Now let’s take a look at the top seven architecture patterns: 

Layered pattern   

This pattern will be useful in creating something that can be broken down into subtasks, and all of them are at a certain level of abstraction. This type of software system architecture is often used in desktop apps and e-commerce web apps.   

Client-server pattern  

As you might have guessed, there are two parties in play here. The way it works is the server supplies the client component with services the client needs from the server, and the later will give the right one to those clients. Also, the server keeps listening to the requests made by the clients. You will encounter such programming architectures in some of the online apps you use every day, such as email and file-sharing services.    

Master-slave pattern  

Just like the pattern above, there are two entities in play here as well. The master component will distribute all the jobs to the slave components and calculate the ultimate result from whatever the slaves have compiled. Such architectural patterns are used in database replication and connecting peripherals to a bus.   

Pipe-filter pattern   

If you are looking to create a system that produces and process streams of data, this would be a good one to choose. Individual processing steps are contained inside a filter, and the data that needs to be processed flows through the pipes. You can use these pipes to buffer or synchronize the data. Good examples of this architecture can be found in data compilers bioinformatic workflows.    

Broker pattern  

This is an excellent pattern to use if you need to connect autonomous computers with other systems which work together without being directly connected. Such components can communicate with each other via a remote procedure call. The broker’s job is to coordinate the flow of information among all of the elements. The servers will send all their functionalities to the broker. When the broker receives a client request, it will redirect the client to the proper service. If you are familiar with Apache Kafka, it is one of the most widely known examples of the broker pattern.  

Peer to peer pattern  

All the separate components are called “peers.” They may function like a client that requests the peers to perform a particular function or as a server that provides the peers with everything they need. The role of the peer may change over time. This sort of pattern is common among file-sharing networks.   

Event-bus pattern  

Unlike some of the other patterns on this list, this one has four entities: bus, listener, source, and channel. The sources send messages to certain channels on the event bus, while the listeners will tune in to channels they need. The listeners will be notified when a message was published to a channel to which they are tuned in. This sort of architecture is widespread in Android apps and various notification services.    

We hope that the information provided will be useful to you when you are designing your software. It is essential to keep in mind that along with all of the architecture patterns we mentioned, the software development methodology will play a significant role as well. Therefore, be sure to take all of the requirements and constraints into account when creating the software you need.