The samples provided in this chapter require Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition with .NET 6 SDK installed.

You can find the sample code for this chapter at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Software-Architecture-with-C-10-and-.NET-6-3E.

A quick search online for a definition of “scalability” returns something along the lines of “the ability of a system to keep working well when there is an increase in demand.” When developers go by this definition, many of them incorrectly conclude that scalability only means adding more hardware to keep things working without stopping their apps.

Scalability relies on hardware solutions to some extent. However, as a software architect, you need to be aware that good software will keep scalability in a sustainable model, which means that well-architected software can save a lot of money. Hence, scalability is not just a matter of hardware but also a matter of overall software design. The point here is that the running costs of a system should also be a factor in architectural decisions.

In Chapter 1, Understanding the Importance of Software Architecture, while discussing software...

Nowadays, C# is one of the most used programming languages in the world, so awareness of C# programming best practices is fundamental for the design of good architectures that satisfy the most common non-functional requirements.

The following sections mention a few simple but effective tips – the associated code samples are available in the GitHub repository of this book. It is worth mentioning that .NET Foundation has developed a library dedicated to benchmarking, called BenchmarkDotNet. You may find it useful for your scenarios. Check it out at https://benchmarkdotnet.org/.

String concatenation

This is a classic one! A naive concatenation of strings with the + string operator may cause serious performance issues since every time two strings are concatenated, their contents are copied into a new string.

So, if we concatenate, for instance, 10 strings that have an average length of 100, the...

Scalability, performance tips, and multithreading are the main tools we can use to tune machine performance. However, the effectiveness of the system you design depends on the overall performance of the whole processing pipeline, which includes both humans and machines.

As a software architect, you cannot improve the performance of humans, but you can improve the performance of man-machine interaction by designing an effective user interface (UI), that is, a UI that ensures fast interaction with humans, which, in turn, means the following:

• The UI must be easy to learn to reduce the time that is needed for the target users to learn how to operate it. This constraint is fundamental if UI changes are frequent, and for public websites that need to attract the greatest possible number of users.
• The UI must not cause any kind of slowdown in data insertion; data entry speed must be limited only by the user’...

.NET 6 brought Windows developers the ability to deliver their software to various platforms. And you, as a software architect, need to pay attention to this. Linux and macOS are no longer a problem for a C# lover – it is much better than that – they are great opportunities to deliver to new customers. Therefore, we need to ensure performance and multi-platform support, two common non-functional requirements for many systems.

Both console applications and web apps designed with .NET 6 in Windows are almost completely compatible with Linux and macOS, too. This means you do not have to build the app again to run it on these platforms. Also, very platform-specific behaviors now have multi-platform support, as shown, for instance, by the System.IO.Ports.SerialPort class, which, starting from .NET Core 3.0, is on Linux.

Microsoft offers scripts to help you install .NET on Linux and macOS. You can find them at https...

As we have seen up to this point in the book, the opportunities and techniques we have for developing software are incredible. If you add all the information you will read about in relation to cloud computing in the next chapters, you will see that the opportunities just increase, as does the complexity involved in maintaining this computing environment.

As a software architect, you must understand that these opportunities come with many responsibilities. The world has changed a lot in recent years. The second decade of the 21st century has required lots of technology. Apps, social media, Industry 4.0, big data, and artificial intelligence are no longer future objectives but current projects that you will lead and deal with in your daily routine.

Considering this scenario, security must have a different approach. The world now regulates companies that manage personal data. For instance, the GDPR – the General Data Protection Regulation ...

The development of this book’s use case will be based on various kinds of .NET Core Visual Studio projects. This section describes all of them. Let us select New project in the Visual Studio File menu.

For instance, you can filter .NET Core project types by typing it in the search engine, as follows:

Figure 2.24: Searching types of .NET Core projects in Visual Studio

There, you will find common C# projects (console, a class library, Windows Form, WPF), and various types of test projects, each based on a different test framework: xUnit, NUnit, and MSTest. Choosing among the various testing frameworks is just a matter of preference since they all offer comparable features. Adding tests to each piece of software that composes a solution is a common practice and allows software to be modified frequently without jeopardizing its reliability.

You may also want to define your class library projects...

Functional requirements that describe system behavior must be completed with non-functional requirements that constrain system performance, scalability, availability, resilience, interoperability, usability, and security.

Performance requirements come from response time and system load requirements. As a software architect, you should ensure you have the required performance at the minimum cost, building efficient algorithms and taking full advantage of the available hardware resources with multithreading.

Scalability is the ability of a system to be adapted to an increasing load. Systems can be scaled vertically by providing more powerful hardware, or horizontally by replicating and load balancing the same hardware, which increases the availability. The cloud, in general, and Azure can help us implement strategies dynamically, with no need to stop your application.

Tools such as .NET 6 that run on several platforms can ensure interoperability, that is, the capability...

1. What are the two conceptual ways to scale a system?
2. Can you deploy your web app automatically from Visual Studio to Azure?
3. What is multithreading useful for?
4. What are the main advantages of the asynchronous pattern over other multithreading techniques?
5. Why is the order of input fields so important?
6. Why is the Path class so important for interoperability?
7. What is the advantage of a .NET standard class library?
8. List the various types of .NET Visual Studio projects.

The following are some books and links you may consider reading to gather more information in relation to this chapter:

• https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/hands-azure-developers
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/best-practices/auto-scaling
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/host-and-deploy/azure-apps/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/parallel-processing-and-concurrency
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/parallel-programming/
• https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance-improvements-in-net-5/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/security/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/
• https://owasp.org/
• https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/DotNet_Security_Cheat_Sheet.html
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/gdpr
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/patterns...