Section 1.3. What Is Architecture?

1.3. What Is Architecture?

We like to talk about architecting applications, but what does that really mean? When an architect designs a house, he has a fairly well-defined task: gather requirements, explore the options, and produce a blueprint. When the builders turn that blueprint into a building, we expect a few things: the building should stay standing, keep the rain and wind out, and let enough light in. Sorry to shatter the illusion, but architecting applications is not much like this.

For a start, if buildings were like software, the architect would be involved in the actual building process, from laying the foundations right through to installing the fixtures. When he designed and built the house, he would start with a coupleof rooms and some basic amenities, and some people would then come and start living there before the building was complete. When it looked like the building work was about to finish, a whole bunch more people would turn up and start living there, too. But these new residents would need new featuresmore bedrooms to sleep in, a swimming pool, a basement, and on and on. The architect would design these new rooms and features, augmenting his original design. But when the time came to build them, the current residents wouldn't leave. They'd continue living in the house even while it was extended, all the time complaining about the noise and dust from the building work. In fact, against all reason, more people would move in while the extensions were being built. By the time the modifications were complete, more would be needed to house the newcomers and keep them happy.

The key to good application architecture is planning for these issues from the beginning. If the architect of our mythical house started out by building a huge, complex house, it would be overkill. By the time it was ready, the residents would have gone elsewhere to live in a smaller house built in a fraction of the time. If we build in such a way that extending our house takes too long, then our residents might move elsewhere. We need to know how to start at the right scale and allow our house to be extended as painlessly as possible.

That's not to say that we're going to get anything right the first time. In the scaling of a typical application, every aspect and feature is probably going to be revisited and refactored. That's finethe task of an application architect isto minimize the time it takes to refactor each component, through careful initial and ongoing design.