APPLICATION ARCHITECTURES:
Application architectures encapsulate the principal characteristics of a class of systems. For example, in real-time systems, there might be generic architectural models of different system types, such as data collection systems or monitoring systems. Although instances of these systems differ in detail, the common architectural structure can be reused when developing new systems of the same type. The application architecture may be re-implemented when developing new systems but, for many business systems, application reuse is possible without re-implementation.
As a software designer, you can use models of application architectures in a number of ways:
1. As a starting point for the architectural design process If you are unfamiliar with the type of application that you are developing, you can base your initial design on a generic application architecture. Of course, this will have to be specialized for the specific system being developed, but it is a good starting point for design.
2. As a design checklist If you have developed an architectural design for an application system, you can compare this with the generic application architecture. You can check that your design is consistent with the generic architecture.
3. As a way of organizing the work of the development team the application architectures identify stable structural features of the system architectures and in many cases, it is possible to develop these in parallel. You can assign work to group members to implement different components within the architecture.
4. As a means of assessing components for reuse If you have components you might be able to reuse, you can compare these with the generic structures to see whether there are comparable components in the application architecture.
5. As a vocabulary for talking about types of applications If you are discussing a specific application or trying to compare applications of the same types, then you can use the concepts identified in the generic architecture to talk about the applications.
There are many types of application system and, in some cases; they may seem to be very different. However, many of these superficially dissimilar applications actually have much in common, and thus can be represented by single abstract application architecture.
The following architectures of two types of application:
1. Transaction processing applications: Transaction processing applications are database centred applications that process user requests for information and update the information in a database. These are the most common type of interactive business systems. They are organized in such a way that user actions can’t interfere with each other and the integrity of the database is maintained. This class of system includes interactive banking systems, e-commerce systems, information systems, and booking systems.
2. Language processing systems: Language processing systems are systems in which the user’s intentions are expressed in a formal language (such as Java). The language processing system processes this language into an internal format and then interprets this internal representation. The best-known language processing systems are compilers, which translate high-level language programs into machine code. However, language processing systems are also used to interpret command languages for databases and information systems, and mark up languages such as XML.
