What is software architecture?
Its a blue print of a software application which is generated before start build of it
Does all software application has architecture?
All workable applications has its own architecture regardless of its size and complexity. May be the architecture is systematically designed or not
Is it really important to have an architecture for all software applications ?
Yes, proper architecture design can help to communicate how the application is being build from scratch to all stake holders in their appropriate perspective
I want to explain this by comparing known house construction methods followed in the industry
1) a house construction can be viewed from
1) engineer view (high level structure of a building)
2) plumper view (fitting water pipe lines, sanitary items with ease maintenance in mind)
3) electrician view (wiring main line, UPS line in required sockets, safety shutter, more over leave junctions for ease maintenance of wiring in future)
4) painter view (apply appropriate painting for outer and inner wall based on customer preference and help in estimate budget of it)
5) of course sponsor's customer view (he/she review all above perspective individually from each stake holder from planning phase itself)
2) Similarly in software design build process can be viewed from different perspective
1) logical view (list of functionalities that system is going to provide to the end user)
2) process view (how the system communicates between their internal components and its performance, how can it be scaled, how make high availability)
3) development view (from the developer perspective and how the above functionalities can be implemented as components)
4) physical view (from the system engineer perspective and project deployment model among nodes and how communication can be made among them)
5) scenarios (its the actual requirement (i.e., use case) for which the system is being designed and this is used to identify architectural element and validate the architecture)
