Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture For Dummies

Chapter 2

Where Do Architectures Come From?

In This Chapter

• Getting familiar with architectural styles
• Building your own software architecture

The two major things that you'll be defining and using in your software architecture are components and services:

• Components are the building blocks of the system — the parts of software or the providers of functionality that you combine into your architecture.
• Services are the things that your components provide to the actors and to one another — the visible functionality of the system. As you divide the functionality of the system into components, you're also defining what services each component provides. The services can be internal or external to the system.

In this chapter, I tell you how to use components and services to create an architecture.