In the world of software development, the challenges to design and build systems are constant. Thus, to overcome these obstacles and create efficient solutions, developers turn to software architecture patterns.

In practice, solutions help address common problems and simplify communication between team members. In addition, standards also help in productivity and, especially, in the quality of the final product.

Thus, we will explore the concept of software architecture patterns, their importance, and some existing examples. Read on in order to learn more about the topic.

What are software architecture patterns?

Software architecture patterns are structured, reusable solutions to recurring problems in the design and organization of software systems.

These patterns function as a shared language among developers, making it easier to communicate and understand development decisions, even within highly experienced, market-savvy teams.

You might even already know some of the software architecture patterns—and you just aren’t aware of it. 

Microservices architecture, for example, has been on the rise for a few years, and is widely adopted by both startups and mature companies.

However, microservice is not the only pattern on this topic: we will see some of the others in the market next.

Layered Architecture

This divides a system into hierarchical layers with well-defined responsibilities, promoting the separation of interests and facilitating the maintenance and evolution of the system.

A common example is the three-tier architecture, consisting of the presentation layer, business layer, and data access layer.

Client-Server Architecture

This establishes a relationship between software components in which one or more clients request services from one or more servers, which process the requests and return the results.

Clients and servers can be deployed on different machines or operating systems, facilitating system deployment and scalability.

Event-driven architecture

This is based on the exchange of messages between components through events, allowing asynchronous communication and decoupling between components.

This facilitates the scalability and adaptability of the system, as well as allowing the integration of components developed in different technologies and platforms.

N-tier Architecture

This is an extension of layered architecture, where the system is divided into an arbitrary number of logical layers.

This approach allows for greater flexibility in the organization and distribution of components, as well as in the assignment of responsibilities and separation of interests.

Repository Architecture

In this architecture, a central repository stores and manages data and statuses shared among system components.

Components access and update the data in the repository through a well-defined interface, which promotes data consistency and integrity, and simplifies communication and coordination between components.

Publish-Subscribe Architecture

This is a message-based architecture pattern, where sending components (publishers) send events or messages to receiving components (subscribers) through an intermediary, such as a message bus.

The components do not need to have direct knowledge of each other, which allows for decoupling and scalability of the system.

Now that you understand what architectural patterns are and have even seen some examples, although there are others, it is time to delve into their importance for software development. 

How important are software architecture patterns?

Their importance is related to various aspects of the development, maintenance and evolution of the creation or maintenance of systems. Some of the key benefits of adopting architectural patterns include:

• Proven practices: architectural patterns represent solutions that have already been tested and proven in various contexts and projects, which reduces the risk of new approaches that do not have any kind of prior validation.
• Improved communication: The adoption of architectural patterns creates a common language among members of the development team, making it easier to communicate and understand design and architecture decisions.
• Reusability and modularity: architectural patterns promote the decomposition of systems into modular and reusable components, which facilitates development and maintenance, as well as allowing the reuse of solutions in different projects, whether simple or complex.
• Final software quality: Adopting architectural standards helps ensure that systems meet quality expectations such as performance, scalability, security, availability, maintainability, etc.
• Productivity gain: Architectural patterns provide guidelines and best practices for software development. This can increase the productivity of the development team and reduce the time required to deliver a functional product that is aligned with stakeholder expectations.
• Ability to evolve: as the solutions adopted are known and understood by the developers, there is an ease of identification and correction of problems, as well as the implementation of new functionalities for the natural evolution of the software;
• Portability and interoperability: another important point is the integration of systems and components from different vendors, with a focus on promoting interoperability and portability between platforms and technologies.

As we have seen, software architecture standards are intended to facilitate the development process so that systems are delivered with more quality to the customer in general.

Whether for a simple or robust solution, it is important to have clear processes that help the team as a whole, since there is a lot of effort and expectation involved in the development process.

Thus, it is important to dive into the universe of architectural patterns in order to understand their characteristics and produce exceptional systems that really get to help companies.

Read also: How to develop quality software: 4 principles in order to improve a product