Software architecture

To get an overall idea of the structure of a software system is intrinsically difficult. The notion of architecture has proven to be a powerful metaphor for describing the structure of a system, that is the components and their interrelations, in a sufficiently abstract way.

Software architecture

architecture -- components and boundaries
case study -- a framework for multimedia feature detection
native objects -- the language boundary
embedded logic -- the paradigm boundary
architectural styles -- distributed object technology
cross-platform development -- Unix versus Windows

Additional keywords and phrases: components, information architecture, multimedia information retrieval, feature detection, portability

slide: Software architecture

In this chapter we will explore the notion of software architecture. We will first look at some definitions. As a preliminary to some technical explorations that illustrate a variety of ways to couple heterogeneous components, we will look at a case study involving a framework for multimedia feature detection, which is to be used for the indexing and retrieval of multimedia objects on the Web. In particular we will look at how to deploy embedded logic for managing meta-information and knowledge, and how to define corresponding collections of objects across language boundaries. As an example, we will discuss the Java and C++ coupling in hush in some detail. Finally, we will discuss some architectural patterns and styles, as well as some solutions for cross-platform development.