Software Architecture

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

Schedule

Week	Week Starting	Topics	Link
1	Feb 19	Software Architecture Layered Architecture	Content
2	Feb 26	Security Principles Architectural Views Architecture Decision Records Pipeline Architecture	Content
3	Mar 4	Containers Microkernal Architecture	Content
4	Mar 11	Service-based Architecture Infrastructure as Code	Content
5	Mar 18	Distributed Systems I Media Server Case Study	Content
6	Mar 25	Distributed Systems II Event-driven Architecture	Content
Mid-semester break
7	Apr 8	Microservices Architecture Message Queues	Content
8	Apr 15	Microservices Architecture (cont.) Distributed Systems II (cont.)	Content
9	Apr 22	Monitoring & Logging Distributed Systems II (cont.)	Content
10	Apr 29	Technical Documentation Distributed Systems III	Content
11	May 6	Distributed Systems III (cont.) Serverless Architecture	Content
12	May 13	Deployment Strategies Data Unleashed	Content
13	May 20	Decomposing Monoliths Soft Skills for Architects Software Engineering Research	Content

Assessment

Assessment	Release	Due by	Weighting
Project Proposal Video Intro	March 7th	March 28th @ 3pm (Week 6)	5%
Building a Scalable Architecture API Functionality Deployed to Cloud Scalable Application	March 3rd	March 25 @ 3pm (Week 6) April 12 @ 3pm (Week 7) May 3rd @ 3pm (Week 10)	30%
Presenting an Architecture	March 8th	Week 10 - 13	30%
Capstone Project	April 21st	June 3rd @ 3pm (Exam Block)	35%

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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