What is software architecture?

That you are reading this book today is thanks to the computer scientists who decided to consider software development as an engineering area. This happened in the last century, more specifically, at the end of the sixties, when they proposed that the way we develop software is quite like the way we construct buildings. That is why we have the name software architecture. Just as an architect designs a building and oversees its construction based on that design, the main goal of a software architect is to ensure that the software application is implemented well; and good implementation requires the design of a great architectural solution.

In a professional development project, you must do the following things:

• Define the customer requirements for the solution.
• Design a great solution to meet those requirements.
• Implement the designed solution.
• Test the solution implementation.
• Validate the solution with your customer.
• Deliver the solution in the working environment.
• Maintain the solution afterward.

Software engineering defines these activities as the software development lifecycle fundamentals. All the theoretical software development process models (waterfall, spiral, incremental, agile, and so on) are somehow related to this cycle. No matter the model you use, if you do not perform the essential tasks in the initial stages of your project, you will not deliver acceptable software as a solution.

The main point about designing great solutions is foundational to the purpose of this book. You must understand that great real-world solutions bring with them a few fundamental constraints:

• The solution needs to meet user requirements.
• The solution needs to be delivered on time.
• The solution needs to adhere to the project budget.
• The solution needs to deliver good quality.
• The solution needs to guarantee safe and effective future evolution.

Great solutions need to be sustainable, and you must understand that there is no sustainable software without great software architecture. Nowadays, great software architecture depends on both modern tools and modern environments to perfectly fit users’ requirements.

For this reason, this book will use some great tools provided by Microsoft. We decided to write the book always following the long-term support (LTS) versions, which is why we are now applying all the examples using .NET 8. This is the second LTS version as a unified platform for software development, which gives us a great opportunity to create fantastic solutions.

Figure 1.1: .NET support

.NET 8 is delivered together with C# 12. Considering the .NET approach of targeting so many platforms and devices, C# is now one of the most used programming languages in the world and runs on everything from small devices up to huge servers in different operating systems (OSs) and environments.

The book will also use Microsoft Azure, which is Microsoft’s cloud platform, where you will find all the components the company provides to build advanced software architecture solutions.

It is worth mentioning that the use of .NET 8 with Azure was just an option chosen by the authors. .NET can work just as well using other cloud providers, and Azure can handle other coding frameworks very well.

To be a software architect, you need to be familiar with these technologies, and many others too. This book will guide you on a journey where, as a software architect working in a team, you will learn how to provide optimal solutions using these tools. Let us start this journey by creating your Azure account.