Difference Between Software Design and Software Architecture

The lines between software architecture and software designing are relatively blur and that sometimes even confuse the software developers. And that ultimately leads to the mixing of elements of software architecture patterns with the design partners, which actually comes under the category of software design. But is there any hard and fast rule to distinguish between software architecture and software design after all? Well here is an explanation on the difference and after reading the definitions and mechanism, the lines will be pretty clear in your mind.

Software Architecture:

The architecture of the software is mainly responsible for depicting the structure of the system and explaining the behavior. The software architecture is based on a collection of components that actually performs specific functions and tackles a particular set of purposes. A sturdy foundation is provided by the software architecture, which will help in developing the software.

Quality, performance, and maintainability are mainly depended on the series of the decisions made by the architecture and that substantially impact the process profoundly. And those architectures which do not play safe and consider the common problems beforehand falls for the long term failure consequences, and that just leads to taking the system down eventually.

 The modern system is based on high levels of patterns and principles which are responsible for proper functioning and developing. The process of the architecture of the software is never wholly depended on one style; instead, it is always a combination of a few techniques which match the requirements, and that make up the complete system effectively.

Well in software architecture the technical requirements always stand out, but this is not all that carries weight. There is so much beyond that like flexibility, reusability, standard security solutions, and even scalability, which will lead to meeting the business expectations efficiently. The characteristics of the software define software’s stand in the market, and it has to be modular, maintainable, and extendable in order to survive in the competitive market of today’s world.

Because characteristics basically portray the execution of software in a technical and operational level and also how the customer will take the end product overall. Any good architecture is always concerned about the low fault tolerance, reliability along with scalability, and performance of the end product. And these main characteristics, along with the feasibility for a small organization, are the key to successful software.

Patterns of Software Architecture:

Before diving into the details of the mode of work of software architecture, it is compulsory to don’t mix the process with the design patterns like factory or adaptor patterns. Anyhow, microservices are the original pattern along with serverless pattern, event-driven pattern, the layered model for the software architecture. The tables turned in favor of micro-services when the Amazon and Netflix, which are the giants of their market, adopted micro-services for their work routine.

Other main Patterns for Software Architecture:

As mentioned above, not only micro-services but the other three models are very imperative in the architecture process as well. The server-less model is basically famous for its two main categories which are backend as a survive and function as a service also represented as BaaS and FaaS respectively. This pattern is for managing the third party service. And this deals with the complexity involved in the servers management and backend management as well.

 And through this pattern, the developers save tons of time, and they also have the upper hand over fixation of the bugs of deployment and regular tasks of servers. Lambda is considered to be the most popular server less API

The event-driven architecture is basically focused on event producers and consumers. The pattern works in a particular manner of decoupling the parts of the system and when one part gets triggered that leads to the triggering of the other part. And the procedure actually starts when an exciting event takes place.

In order to explain in simple words, let's consider an example of an online store system, and it is divided into two main approaches. The first one is a purchase module, and the other one is the vendor module. When the customer engages with the website, the purchase module activates and generates order ending. And that in return enables the vendor module, and it will be waiting till any other command comes by. Once the vendor is done with its task, it will either execute another job or firing another new event is also on the cards.

Software Design:

According to the details mentioned above, it is quite apparent that software architecture deals with the skeletons and infrastructure of the software. Whereas the software design is wholly focused on the coding of the design and deciding the work procedure of modules, scope of classes, and the purposes of functions along with many other primary purposes. The SOLID principles act as the backbone of the design pattern, and it helps in solving regular problems as well.

SOLID has five main functions, and breaking them down would be a single responsibility, open closed principle, Liskov substitution, interface segregation principle, and dependency inversion principle.

Single responsibility principle is about the single purpose of every class and defining the responsibility and the reason for the purpose of change. Open closed principle is about the concept of class opening for the purpose of the extension but closes and settles for the modification. In other words, it gives you the free hand of adding the functionalities. But it is not allowed to edit the current function, and the current code will not break that way only.

Principle of Liskov substitution is the guidance, and it works with inheritance to not break the application logic at any time of the procedure. For example, the child is associated with a class called xyclass, and the child inherits it from the parent class of abclass. The child should not be replicating the functionality and changing the behavior of the parent class, and this way, it is easy to use the object of xyclass. And not the objective of abclass would be broke in the application logic.

Principle of interface segregation is about structuring your code in a particular manner that you would not need to force any implementation of a function. As the class is able to implement multiple features, it is essential to categorize the interfaces and save the process from forcing.

Dependency inversion principle is about the importance of the testability and modularity of the code and decoupling of it. For example, the class of purchase solely depends on the user’s class. And then the user object instantiation has to come from an outside source of the purchased course at all cost.

Difference Between Software Architecture and Software Design:

The implementation details are understated in the process of software architecture, and all the exposure is given to the structure of the system. The elements and components interaction within a system is also tackled with within the category of software architecture, and implementation details of the project are also being highlighted.

Whereas the design is concerned mostly about the data structure, algorithms along with the implementation of details of individual components, and that made the concerns overlap between software architecture and software design. Every particular case has its own stance, and according to that, the pattern is followed like one case can be focused on the architectural approach whereas the other one would be all about design and its crucial decisions.

However, it is prevalent to say that architecture is about design, but the design itself is not all about architecture. As in practical filed, the architecture draws the line and separates the software architecture and the software design, which is the non-architectural design. But still there are no hard and fast rules, every case comes with its own limitations, and that leads to guidelines that fit that one particular case only. Although there have been attempts to tackle the issue and make the lines clear.

 The process of design evolves over the period of time, and it also changes during the implementation stages of the system for betterment. While the architecture is continuously learning and testing the designs and it is also said that architecture can not know everything to adequately architect the system.

However, there are organizations who are facing issues in the system in the design and as well as the architectural level. That leads to the conclusion that the blend of both of the professions will be a cause of a big hit for your company.

Even though the lines overlap and the patterns and concerns of each of the approach intermingle with each other. But it is quite an essential task for the software architecture and software designers to work together so they can produce something significant which will add value to the market and help the industry grow. The software developers who have software architecture along with the designer on the same page have an additional capacity of producing extra effectual results than the other way around.