5 Common Software Architecture Patterns

In this article, we’ll discuss what software architecture patterns are and review some app architecture patterns. Then we’ll dive into the most commonly used software architecture patterns and examine how they function. Then we’ll weigh their pros and cons and identify the best software engineering scenarios for achieving quality outcomes with each pattern. What is App Architecture? Consider a software project that involves designing a grocery app. To build this app, you’ll need to first define its design and architecture, as these are the foundational pillars upon which the rest of the app will be built. For instance, how will the shopping cart function? How will you use an algorithm to suggest products? The list goes on. A few decades ago, the established patterns for solving these problems were limited. Today, however, software development has evolved to the point that we now have many more architectural models that provide distinct advantages for different app types. Software architecture patterns are solutions to general software engineering problems that are reoccurring. In the grocery app design we mentioned earlier, we can reuse algorithms that have already been defined for product suggestions and make tweaks according to our app’s demands. The architecture involved in implementing the suggestions module is only one part of the architectural pattern here. Now that we know what a software architecture pattern is, let’s understand the reasons to use them. As a software engineer or developer or an architect, here are a few reasons to use an existing architecture pattern for your next project: - Build more optimized systems: With the use of architecture patterns, we build transferrable models that can be reused, thus contributing to a scalable, extensible, and optimized structure. - Early design changes: Depending on the pattern implemented, most architecture patterns allow you to make changes in the early stages of development, thus producing a flexible and robust foundational architecture pattern that is error-free. - Communication among stakeholders: A software architecture pattern represents a simple abstraction of a system that the system’s stakeholders can use as a basis for mutual understanding, negotiation, consensus, and communication. Now that we understand the importance of software architecture patterns, let’s consider five common examples and where we could use them in software development. 1. Layered Architecture Pattern Layered architecture is one of the most common patterns used across the software industry because it is easy to develop and maintain. As the name suggests, the layered architecture follows a tiered approach, where one layer provides services to its higher layer. This is a rather traditional method for designing most software. Its purpose is the separation of concerns, which means that all the components are interconnected but do not depend on each other. For instance, consider the typical four-layered application architecture pattern below. At the top is the presentation/UI layer, which requests services. At the bottom is the database layer, which provides services to the subsequent higher layers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - -