IT Architectures and Middleware: Strategies for Building Large, Integrated Systems, Second Edition

11. Application Design and IT Architecture

This chapter is a linking chapter, linking the technology discussions of the previous chapters to the design discussions of the following chapters.

During our discussions so far, many design questions have been left unanswered. At what point is the decision made to use a middleware bus architecture, a hub architecture, or a Web services architecture? If the decision is too early, there may not be enough information to make a good decision. If the decision is too late, there is a danger of being forced to rewrite much of the application. At what point is the functionality assigned to tiers, and how is this done? In this chapter we present an outline of how we tackle these problems. In the following chapters ...