Software Architecture

"Architecture is about the important stuff. Whatever that is."

Schedule

Week	Week Starting	Topics	Link
1	Feb 23	Software Architecture Architectural Views Layered Architecture	Content
2	Mar 2	Security Principles Architecture Decision Records Pipeline Architecture	Content
3	Mar 9	Containers Microkernel Architecture	Content
4	Mar 16	Infrastructure as Code Service-based Architecture	Content
5	Mar 23	Distributed Systems I Event-driven Architecture	Content
6	Mar 30	Distributed Systems I (cont.) Microservices Architecture Message Queues	Content
Mid-Semester Break
7	Apr 13	Distributed Systems II Microservices Architecture (cont.)	Content
8	Apr 20	Distributed Systems II (cont.) Serverless Architecture	Content
9	Apr 27	Distributed Systems III Monitoring & Logging	Content
10	May 4	Labour Day	Content
11	May 11	Distributed Systems III (cont.) Technical Documentation	Content
12	May 18	Deployment Strategies Decomposing Monoliths Soft Skills for Architects Software Engineering Research	Content
13	May 25	Architecture Presentations	Content

Assessment

Assessment	Release	Due by	Weighting
Cloud Infrastructure Assignment API Functionality Deployed to Cloud Scalable Application	March 6th	March 27th @ 3pm (Week 5) April 13th @ 3pm (Week 7) May 1st @ 3pm (Week 9)	40%
Architecture Presentation	April 13th	Week 13	30%
Capstone Project	April 13th	June 8th @ 3pm (Exam Block)	30%

Additional Resources

These resources have helped to influence the design of the course and the course content. You do not need to use these resources to be successful in this course, however, they are useful if you wish to take your knowledge further.

• Fundamentals of Software Architecture

  Mark Richards & Neal Ford

  This is a recent book (2020) which begins in part one by introducing the responsibilities of a software architecture, followed by some guiding principles for architectures. In part two, the book enumerates many of the architectures introduced in this course with good descriptions for later reference. Finally the book returns to the soft skills required for a career in software architecting.

  In this course we have used this book to guide our discussion of important architectures.

• Software Architecture in Practice

  Len Bass, Paul Clements & Rick Kazman

  This book is a staple of the field. Most courses on software architecture follow this book as a reference. The book is quite terse and academic which will require a strong will to complete. Rather than focusing on specific architecture patterns as in Richards & Ford, this book provides tactics to achieve each quality attribute which can be used to design new architectures

  In this course we have used this book as a key reference for concepts and as one approach to categorising architectural views.

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications

  Martin Kleppmann

  The focus of this book is on three quality attributes; reliability, scalability, and maintainability. Taking a modern and pragmatic approach, this book dives head first into techniques of managing the most difficult systems to scale, data-intensive systems.

  Our lecture mini-series on distributed computing is heavily centred around the contents of this book.

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