Common Software
Architectural Patterns
Ever wondered how large enterprise scale systems are designed?
Before major software development starts, we have to choose a
suitable architecture that will provide us with the desired
functionality and quality attributes. Hence, we should
understand different architectures, before applying them to our
design.
What is an Architectural Pattern?
According to Wikipedia,
An architectural pattern is a general, reusable solution to a
commonly occurring problem in software architecture within
a given context. Architectural patterns are similar to software
design pattern but have a broader scope.
In this article, I will be briefly explaining the following 10
common architectural patterns with their usage, pros and cons.
1. Layered pattern
2. Client-server pattern
3. Master-slave pattern
4. Pipe-filter pattern
5. Broker pattern
6. Peer-to-peer pattern
7. Event-bus pattern
8. Model-view-controller pattern
9. Blackboard pattern
10. Interpreter pattern
1. Layered pattern
This pattern can be used to structure programs that can be
decomposed into groups of subtasks, each of which is at a
particular level of abstraction. Each layer provides services to
the next higher layer.
The most commonly found 4 layers of a general information
system are as follows.
Presentation layer (also known as UI layer)
Application layer (also known as service layer)
Business logic layer (also known as domain layer)
Data access layer (also known as persistence layer)
Usage
General desktop applications.
E commerce web applications.
Layered pattern
2. Client-server pattern
This pattern consists of two parties; a server and
multiple clients. The server component will provide services to
multiple client components. Clients request services from the
server and the server provides relevant services to those clients.
Furthermore, the server continues to listen to client requests.
Usage
Online applications such as email, document sharing and
banking.
request()
Send()
Sendto
Receive from
Reply()
Client-server pattern
3. Master-slave pattern
This pattern consists of two parties; master and slaves. The
master component distributes the work among identical slave
components, and computes a final result from the results which
the slaves return.
Usage
In database replication, the master database is regarded as
the authoritative source, and the slave databases are
synchronized to it.
Peripherals connected to a bus in a computer system (master
and slave drives).
Master-slave pattern
4. Pipe-filter pattern
This pattern can be used to structure systems which produce
and process a stream of data. Each processing step is enclosed
within a filter component. Data to be processed is passed
through pipes. These pipes can be used for buffering or for
synchronization purposes.
Usage
Compilers. The consecutive filters perform lexical analysis,
parsing, semantic analysis, and code generation.
Workflows in bioinformatics.
Pipe-filter pattern
5. Broker pattern
This pattern is used to structure distributed systems with
decoupled components. These components can interact with
each other by remote service invocations. A broker component
is responsible for the coordination of communication
among components.
Servers publish their capabilities (services and characteristics)
to a broker. Clients request a service from the broker, and the
broker then redirects the client to a suitable service from its
registry.
Usage
Message broker software such as Apache
ActiveMQ, Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ and JBoss
Messaging.
Broker pattern
6. Peer-to-peer pattern - P2P
In this pattern, individual components are known as peers.
Peers may function both as a client, requesting services from
other peers, and as a server, providing services to other peers.
A peer may act as a client or as a server or as both, and it can
change its role dynamically with time.
Usage
File-sharing networks such as Gnutella and G2)
Multimedia protocols such as P2PTV and PDTP.
Proprietary multimedia applications such as Spotify.
Peer-to-peer pattern
7. Event-bus pattern
This pattern primarily deals with events and has 4 major
components; event source, event
listener, channel and event bus. Sources publish messages
to particular channels on an event bus. Listeners subscribe to
particular channels. Listeners are notified of messages that are
published to a channel to which they have subscribed before.
Usage
Android development
Notification services
Event-bus pattern
8. Model-view-controller pattern
This pattern, also known as MVC pattern, divides an interactive
application in to 3 parts as,
1. model — contains the core functionality and data
2. view — displays the information to the user (more than one
view may be defined)
3. controller — handles the input from the user
This is done to separate internal representations of information
from the ways information is presented to, and accepted from,
the user. It decouples components and allows efficient code
reuse.
Usage
Architecture for World Wide Web applications in major
programming languages.
Web frameworks such as Django and Rails.
Model-view-controller pattern
9. Blackboard pattern
This pattern is useful for problems for which no deterministic
solution strategies are known. The blackboard pattern consists
of 3 main components.
blackboard — a structured global memory containing
objects from the solution space
knowledge source — specialized modules with their own
representation
control component — selects, configures and executes
modules.
All the components have access to the blackboard. Components
may produce new data objects that are added to the blackboard.
Components look for particular kinds of data on the blackboard,
and may find these by pattern matching with the existing
knowledge source.
Usage
Speech recognition
Vehicle identification and tracking
Protein structure identification
Sonar signals interpretation.
Blackboard pattern
10. Interpreter pattern
This pattern is used for designing a component that interprets
programs written in a dedicated language. It mainly specifies
how to evaluate lines of programs, known as sentences or
expressions written in a particular language. The basic idea is to
have a class for each symbol of the language.
Usage
Database query languages such as SQL.
Languages used to describe communication protocols.
Interpreter pattern