Have you read this book...
Aaron Bandell
I wanted to see if anyone has read Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice. If you have read it, what are your thoughts. Can you make any comparisons to Software Architecture in Practice?
Thanks in advance for any input.
Aaron
George Fairbanks
I can't quite say that I have both books open on my desk right now: the
Taylor book is open as is the "green book" (Documenting Software
Architectures) rather than the "yellow book" (SA in Practice). And the
reason they are open is that I'm trying to finish up my own book
(http://rhinoresearch.com/book -- sample chapters are posted).
The Taylor book is an academic book targeted at senior undergraduates or
graduate students. As such, it is like the textbooks you remember, with
an excellent organization and comprehensive treatment of the material
coupled with unmentioned blind spots and missing advice on how to
pragmatically deal with the problems that invariably arise. The authors
are from the west coast camp on software engineering (the other major
camp being the SEI/CMU camp).
The SEI book is a product of lots of large-scale industrial practice,
quite a bit of it military. Compared to the Taylor book, it has more
advice from the trenches. Their Attribute Driven Design is as close as
anyone has gotten to a rational approach to architecting large systems.
However, the huge (military) system bias is present. ATAM, CBAM, and
QAW sessions are too expensive and make sense if you are building a
battleship or electrical grid, less so if you are building a word
processor or website. It rightly emphasizes focusing on quality attributes.
To your list, you should add the SEI's Documenting Software
Architectures book
(http://www.amazon.com/Documenting-Software-Architectures-Views-Beyond/dp/0201703726).
It has approx one million authors (and I am a contributing author to
the next edition, due out at the end of this year). It suffers and
benefits from that great range of authors. I don't agree with its
premise that many people should exhaustively document their architecture
but it lays out a coherent set of abstractions that you can use if you
are Agile Modeling or similar.
My advice: buy and read all three. It stinks that they are expensive
but they are the top three books (by sales I believe, and by mindshare
and in my opinion). You are unlikely to agree with everything they say,
but I learn something every time I reread them. Of course by writing my
book I'm trying to bridge the pros and cons of them, but I'm sure mine
will suffer some other tragic flaw because that's the nature of the beast.
Another book to consider is the Shaw and Garlan book on Software
Architecture
(http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Perspectives-Emerging-Discipline/dp/0131829572).
It is excellent but becoming dated (1995). What I like is that it
clearly spells out why architecture isn't the same as lower-level
design. BTW, none of these books cover enterprise architecture, but
arguably that's only important if you are supervising more than a
handful of other architects (YMMV).
Regards and happy reading!
-George
Aaron Bandell wrote:
>
> I wanted to see if anyone has read Software Architecture: Foundations,
> Theory, and Practice
> <http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Foundations-Theory-Practice/dp/0470167742/ref=pd_sim_b_3>.
> If you have read it, what are your thoughts. Can you make any
> comparisons to Software Architecture in Practice
> <http://www.amazon.com/Software-Architecture-Practice-2nd-Bass/dp/0321154959/ref=pd_sim_b_2>?
>
>
> Thanks in advance for any input.
>
> Aaron
>
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George Fairbanks
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Software-Architecture-Ian-Gorton/dp/3540287132
This book is IT-focused, a benefit for those of us who work mostly in
IT since it describes the common things you're likely to see: service
busses, event busses, application containers (eg JEE). And it's
comparatively cheaper.
-George
Aaron Bandell
Thank you for the very detailed information. I have currently read both of the SEI books you mentioned. I was just curious if I would get anything out of also reading the Taylor book. You have given me a good perspective on what to expect.
Thanks!
Aaron
From: George Fairbanks <fair...@cmu.edu>
To: Aaron Bandell <aaron....@gmail.com>
Cc: iasa-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, March 1, 2010 1:21:40 PM
Subject: Re: [IASA Denver] Have you read this book...
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/iasa-denver?hl=en.
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