Summary

We began this chapter with a discussion of what an architecture is and how different organizations model architectures to understand both their software development assets and other non-software assets. The architecture can include hardware, processors within the hardware, and different components that make up an overall system.

Architectures can be logical and physical. A logical architecture looks at the architecture as it is and as it wants to be without looking at any specific technology, implementation, or physical attributes of the system. The physical architecture goes deep into how the architecture is implemented, looking at development languages, deployment platforms, physical hardware, and more. Understanding both types of architecture is important to achieve an understanding at all levels of the organization to ensure that you are doing what is right for the future.

Having a solid architecture when designing an application and system helps to ensure it can survive through time. As applications and systems evolve, they must be flexible so that you do not have to change the architecture or drastically change the application when the business changes. If systems aren't architected with this in mind, you might have to make significant changes or even rewrite the entire application just because some business processes have changed.