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Does Architecture Really

Help?And apologies...Eric Nelson

Application Architect

Eric.nelson@microsoft.comhttp://blogs.msdn.com/ericnel -

Slides!

mailto:Eric.nelson@microsoft.comhttp://blogs.msdn.com/ericnelhttp://blogs.msdn.com/ericnelmailto:Eric.nelson@microsoft.com

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Why are we here?

An opportunity to consider whether timespent on Architecting solutions is time wellspent

I am confused about the importance of

formally thinking about softwarearchitecture

Outputs: Summary of combined experiences around

Architecture - the good and bad Consensus (perhaps!) around questions such

as: "Is choice a good thing? "Is there a perfect architecture "Does architecture matter?

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Topics

My background/experience

Helps you understand why I am wrong

ISVs explained

Architecture my definition

Helps us do this in 75mins

My 9 Observations on Architecture Simple Exercises

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About me

1986 Software Development on Unix,VAX, Assembly, 3GL, 4GL, RDBMS

1995 Software Development on Unix

and Windows 3GL, 4GL, RDBMS 1996 Joined Microsoft for 2 years

Advising Independent Software Vendors

on development with latest (beta)technologies from Microsoft

2008 Still at Microsoft

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Independent SoftwareVendors

Write once, sell many In reality a large spectrum

One version on 10,000 desktops 100 versions in 100 companies

1 user, 100 user, 1000 user, 10000 user ISVs care about

Most things every other company cares about Cares more than most about

Cross Platform Targeting Multiple Databases Versioning, Deployment, Patching Making the wrong decision may last 10, 15 years and

be installed in many sites Customisation

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Some examples

Run Everywhere:

ISV building thin client solution thatmust work on every browser, handle

1000s of concurrent users and bedeployed on SQL Server, Oracle, Sybaseand JBoss or Websphere

SOA heavy: ISV building asolution that must work within anSOA/ESB architecture includinghaving no UI

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Architects?

Microsoft Defines Infrastructure Architects

Responsible for platform finds the pragmatic solutions to the requirements of the

organization as presented by the Enterprise architect

Enterprise Architects Responsible for a system of systems Enterprise Architects create the master blueprint that guides

their organizations business and IT systems

Solution Architects Responsible for a system Solutions Architects decide which technologies to use.

They work very closely with developers to ensureproper implementation

Solution Architects Generate Software Architecture focus of this session

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Architecture vs Design

All Architecture is Design

Not all Design is Architecture

Defined as: The software architecture of a program or computing system is the structure orstructures of the system, which comprise software elements, the externallyvisible properties of those elements, and the relationships between them Bass,Clements, Kazzman (SEI)

Or

The design decisions that are reallyexpensive to change Eric

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Exercise: Up frontarchitecture?

Question: Would you work on architecture for the

following before you started to build it?

Tasks: Make a passenger plane? Make a school? Make a 1 bedroom house? Make a garage? Make a treehouse? Make a stool? Make a new shelf in your bedroom?

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Exercise: Up frontarchitecture?

Question: Would you work on architecture for the

following before you started to code it?

Tasks: Make a control system for a power station?

Make an IDE? (think Eclipse or VisualStudio)

Make a web browser? (think Firefox of IE) Make a simple RSS reader?

Make a hangman game?

Make a simple calculator?

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Observations on Architecture 1We dont have one

Some ISVs think lots about Architecture

Some cut code

No apparent correlation to success

Q: Does their need to be a formalarchitecture?

Ob ti A hit t 2

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Observations on Architecture 2More than one way to skin a

cat Many ISVs solving the same problem Each using a very different approach

Q: Is there a perfectarchitecture?

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Exercise

Question How do you architect a system that will

work against Microsoft SQL Server OROracle OR DB2 just as well

Possible Answers Lowest common denominator use of SQL

One hand coded implementation per RDBMS

Code generation per RDBMS at develop time

Code generation per RDBMS at deploy time

Code generation per RDBMS at run time

Combinations of the above

Own proprietary database

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Observations on Architecture 3The grass is always greener

ISV with Architecture A is moving to Architecture B

ISV with Architecture B is moving to Architecture A

EXAMPLE:

Thick and Thin Clients

Q: Do teams blame architecture when they shouldbe looking elsewhere?

Ob ti A hit t 4

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Observations on Architecture 4You can get it completely

wrong You can have very badArchitectures

Symptoms include:

Changes are very expensive

Nobody admits to it being theirarchitecture

Q: What other symptoms do yousee?

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Exercise

Question:

What really bad architectures have youseen?

Examples: Road Warrior application which always required

connectivity to the server

Financial application that loaded all the data into memory

MANY times in one transaction Retail application using large amounts of XML rather than

relational tables

Ob ti A hit t 5

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Observations on Architecture 5Explicit vs Implicit

Or planned and evolutionary design

Martin Fowler

Software Development Approaches impact

on the importance of Architecture E.g. Waterfall vs XP Programming

Q:Is architectural thinking alwayspresent?

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Observations on Architecture 6If all you have is a hammer... Technology availability significantly impacts architecture In 1990

4GLs such as Uniface and Oracle Forms no architecture discussion

In 1996 MTS/COM+ allowed VB6 teams to easily build server side code MSMQ allowed VB6 teams to build async architectures

Active Server Pages allowed VB6 teams to build web applications(replacing CGI)

In 2008 LINQ allows .NET developers to easily adopt ORM SQL Server 2005/2008 allows developers to easily work with XML Workflow Foundation easily moved from code to workflow Cloud Services

Commodity HPC Q: Can architects keep up with the technology impact on

architecture? Q: Can architecture be kept separate from technology

choice?

Ob ti A hit t 7

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Observations on Architecture 7Who cares I have a cheque

book and a data centre Software with bad architecture candeliver a great service

Massive advances in hardware

Lower expectations?

404 error

Two examples Apply hardware

Apply developers

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Example: Apply Hardware

Two pieces of crap is better than one piece ofcrap http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=9737

Amazon S3, EC2

Q: How many Servers does ebay have? Nb: ebay has very smart architecture

http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=9737http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=9737

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Example: Apply cheapdevelopers

Developer in the UK 500 to 1000per day

Developer in India 100 to 300 perday

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Observations on Architecture 8Invest in a Rabbits Foot

Hope for the best Architectures

Do not architect for edge conditions

Humans, spreadsheets, emails andscripts handle the edge

Q: Is this the death of the

transaction?

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Observations on Architecture 9If only...

The time spent thinking explicitly aboutarchitecture becomes more important overtime

Software Archaeology

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Questions

Are software architectures gettingworse?

Is time spent on software architecture,time well spent?

Is time spent up front, time wellspent?

Is there only one perfect architecture?

Does cheap hardware, cloud services,easier refactoring and cheapdevelopers change the need forsoftware architecture?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture

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Thankyou