Chapter 1: Patterns for Building Enterprise Solutions

Overview

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked…A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.” — John Gall in Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail

Enterprise class business solutions, the kind that companies bet their business on, are often extremely complex and must perform well against high expectations. Not only must they be highly available and scalable in the face of unpredictable usage, they must also be malleable and predictable in response to rapidly changing business requirements.

The best solutions are those composed of a set of smaller, simple mechanisms that solve simple problems reliably and effectively. During the process of building larger and more complex systems, these simple mechanisms combine to evolve the larger system.

Knowledge of these simple mechanisms does not come easy. It usually resides in the minds of experienced developers and architects and is an important part of the tacit knowledge they bring to projects.

This guide captures the knowledge of seasoned developers and presents it in the form of a patterns catalog. Each pattern contains a simple, proven mechanism that solves a small problem effectively. Although you can understand and apply each pattern individually, you often combine these patterns to build complex systems.

Patterns are useful to developers and architects because they:

• Document simple mechanisms that work.

• Provide a common vocabulary and taxonomy for developers and architects.

• Enable solutions to be described concisely as combinations of patterns.

• Enable reuse of architecture, design, and implementation decisions.

This chapter introduces the notion of a pattern, explains how a pattern documents simple, proven mechanisms, and shows how collections of patterns provide a common language for developers and architects. To illustrate these concepts, this chapter applies abbreviated versions of actual patterns to real-life development situations.