Book Image

Software Architecture with C++

By : Adrian Ostrowski, Piotr Gaczkowski
Book Image

Software Architecture with C++

By: Adrian Ostrowski, Piotr Gaczkowski

Overview of this book

Software architecture refers to the high-level design of complex applications. It is evolving just like the languages we use, but there are architectural concepts and patterns that you can learn to write high-performance apps in a high-level language without sacrificing readability and maintainability. If you're working with modern C++, this practical guide will help you put your knowledge to work and design distributed, large-scale apps. You'll start by getting up to speed with architectural concepts, including established patterns and rising trends, then move on to understanding what software architecture actually is and start exploring its components. Next, you'll discover the design concepts involved in application architecture and the patterns in software development, before going on to learn how to build, package, integrate, and deploy your components. In the concluding chapters, you'll explore different architectural qualities, such as maintainability, reusability, testability, performance, scalability, and security. Finally, you will get an overview of distributed systems, such as service-oriented architecture, microservices, and cloud-native, and understand how to apply them in application development. By the end of this book, you'll be able to build distributed services using modern C++ and associated tools to deliver solutions as per your clients' requirements.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Section 1: Concepts and Components of Software Architecture
5
Section 2: The Design and Development of C++ Software
6
Architectural and System Design
10
Section 3: Architectural Quality Attributes
15
Section 4: Cloud-Native Design Principles
21
About Packt

Developing architecture using Agile principles

Seemingly, architecture and Agile development methodologies are in an adversarial relationship, and there are many myths around this topic. There are a few simple principles that you should follow in order to develop your product in an Agile way while still caring about its architecture.

Agile, by nature, is iterative and incremental. This means preparing a big, upfront design is not an option in an Agile approach to architecture. Instead, a small, but still reasonable upfront design should be proposed. It's best if it comes with a log of decisions with the rationale for each of them. This way, if the product vision changes, the architecture can evolve with it. To support frequent release delivery, the upfront design should then be updated incrementally. Architecture developed this way is called evolutionary architecture.

Managing architecture doesn't need to mean keeping massive documentation. In fact, documentation should cover only what's essential as this way it's easier to keep it up to date. It should be simple and cover only the relevant views of the system.

There's also the myth of the architect as the single source of truth and the ultimate decision-maker. In Agile environments, it's the teams who are making decisions. Having said that, it's crucial that the stakeholders are contributing to the decision-making process – after all, their points of view shape how the solution should look.

An architect should remain part of the development team as often they're bringing strong technical expertise and years of experience to the table. They should also take part in making estimations and plan the architecture changes needed before each iteration.

In order for your team to remain Agile, you should think of ways to work efficiently and only on what's important. A good idea to embrace to achieve those goals is domain-driven design.