The main difference between software design and software architecture is that software design refers to converting the requirements to suitable format so that the programmers can perform software coding and implementation while software architecture is creating a high-level structure of the software.
Developing a software program is a complex task. In fact, it is more advanced than writing a regular computer program. Moreover, the first task of software development is to gather requirements and to analyze them. Software design and software architecture are two concepts related to the software development process.
Key Areas Covered
1. What is Software Design
– Definition, Functionality
2. What is Software Architecture
– Definition, Functionality
3. Difference Between Software Design and Software Architecture
– Comparison of Key Differences
Key Terms
Coding, Software, Software Architecture, Software Design
What is Software Design
Software design is the process of defining code level designing. In other words, it involves defining what each module is performing, the classes, functions and their usages, etc. Moreover, software developers should have an understanding of what software design patterns to use to solve a particular problem.
Figure 1: Developing a Software Program
There are three main types of design patterns.
Creational design pattern – These patterns concern the way of creating objects. They are used at the time of instantiating objects. Moreover, Singleton, prototype, and factory are some examples of creational design patterns.
Structural design pattern – These patterns concern how classes and objects are used to build a large application. Furthermore, these patterns help to identify the relationships between classes; for instance, how a class inherits from other classes. Adapter, bridge, composite and decorator are some examples of structural design patterns.
Behavioral design pattern – These patterns focus on the interactions of objects. Moreover, they ensure that the objects communicate with each other easily. They also help to make the modules loosely coupled. Additionally, Iterator, mediator, and observer are some examples of behavioral design patterns.
What is Software Architecture
Software architecture refers to the process of transforming software characteristics into structured solutions in order to meet technical and business requirements. These characteristics include scalability, security, reusability, extensibility, modularity, maintainability, etc. Moreover, these characteristics denote the expectations of a software program in technical and operational levels. In addition, when the client explains the characteristic the software should have, the software architect decides the key characteristics to be implemented within the available time and cost.
There are various software architecture patterns. Some of them are as follows.
Microservice Architecture – It divides an application into a set of small independent modular services. Each service performs its own task to ensure the proper functioning of the entire system. Moreover, these services communicate with each other via a well-defined API to accomplish the business requirements. Thus, it helps to make the development process easier and efficient.
Figure 2: Microservice Architecture
Event Driven Architecture – It depends on the production, detection, and consumption of events. Moreover, this architecture consists of event creators and consumers. The creator is the source of the event; it knows that the event has occurred. The consumer, on the other hand, is an entity that gets the output from an event or process the event. Overall, this architecture mainly involves decoupling the system.
Serverless Architecture – It involves using third-party services to manage the complexity of the server. In other words, it refers to backend management. Thus, this architecture allows saving a lot of time. It also helps to fix bugs in deployment and in other regular tasks of a server.
Difference Between Software Design and Software Architecture
Definition
Software design is the process of creating a specification of a software artifact that helps to implement the software while software architecture is the process of creating high-level structures of a software system. Thus, this is the main difference between software design and software architecture.
Basis
Moreover, software design creates software artifacts describing all the units of the system to support coding whereas software architecture converts the software characteristics into a high level structure. Hence, this is an important difference between software design and software architecture.
Patterns
Creational, structural and behavioral are some software design patterns while Microservice, serverless and event-driven are some software architecture patterns.
Usage
Another difference between software design and software architecture is that software design helps to implement the software while software architecture helps to define the high-level infrastructure of the software.
Conclusion
In brief, software design and software architecture are two concepts related to the software development process. The main difference between software design and software architecture is that software design refers to converting the requirements to suitable format so that the programmers can perform software coding and implementation while software architecture is creating a high-level structure of the software.
References:
1.“Design Patterns in Java – Javatpoint.” Www.javatpoint.com, Available here.
2.“Software Design.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Apr. 2019, Available here.
3.“Software Architecture.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Apr. 2019, Available here.
4.“What Is Event-Driven Architecture (EDA)? – Definition from WhatIs.com.” SearchMicroservices, Available here.
Image Courtesy:
1.”910940″ (CC0) via Pxhere
2. “Microservice architecture” By Paul Downey (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr
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