Architectural patterns

We have so far covered some design patterns along with some useful examples. We have also seen some standards for communication protocols that are vital to any integrated system or connected application. We will now look at the bigger picture by considering architectural patterns.

Since the architecture is essentially a macro-level view of the system and its development, we will focus on the entire development process and keep the sequence of activities in place. Let's begin with a full view of the general software development life cycle, setting aside any specific methodology for now.

A typical software development process has the following activities in this order, while still having iterations of all the activities or parts of certain activities:

Figure 3.3 – The typical activities in a software development process

What we went through in the previous section applies to the development phase or the development activities...