5 Software Architecture Free Online FlashCards

What does software architecture describe?

Software architecture is a system’s high-level organization: its major components, their interactions, constraints, and the reasoning behind key decisions.

Why describe architecture using different views?

Different views address different stakeholder concerns; for example, a module view can help developers, while a deployment view can help operators.

How does a layered architectural style organize responsibilities?

A layered style organizes responsibilities into levels, such as presentation, application logic, and data access. Limits on which layers can call others help preserve the structure.

What is a key benefit and limitation of client–server architecture?

Clients request services from servers. This centralizes service provision, but clients may depend on server availability and network performance.

How does a pipe-and-filter style process data?

Independent filters transform data and pass results through pipes. This suits sequences of data-processing steps, especially when filters avoid shared state and dependence on other filters’ identities.

What is a trade-off of event-driven architecture?

Producers publish events for consumers to handle. This can reduce direct dependencies, but complicates event ordering, tracing, and failure handling.

What trade-off comes with separately deployable services?

Capabilities are provided by separately deployable services. Independent deployment and scaling may help, but network communication, distributed data, and operational complexity add costs.

Can a system combine architectural styles?

Styles can be combined: a system may be layered internally while using client–server communication between its user interface and backend.

What is system decomposition?

System decomposition divides a system into components or subsystems with defined responsibilities and interfaces.

What do high cohesion and low coupling mean?

High cohesion keeps related responsibilities together within a component; low coupling means changes in one component require few changes elsewhere.

What do quality attributes describe?

Quality attributes describe how well a system performs important behaviors or meets operational needs, rather than what features it provides.

How does a quality scenario make a goal useful?

A measurable scenario makes a quality goal concrete, such as specifying that 95% of catalog searches finish within 300 milliseconds at 5,000 requests per second.