Software Architecture is one of the important topics for software engineers, because many failures of software development projects are caused by inadequate design. Thus, it is essential to learn more about architectural issues in theory and practice. Interesting new books that have been published recently or in the near future could be very helpful:
- In The Architecture of Open Source Applications authors explain the design of well known open source solutions like Erlang/OTP, Eclipse, and Audacity. Obtaining a guided tour about the internal structure of such successful systems gives software engineers an insight into the best practices and pitfalls. The book is available in printed form, as an ebook or online.
- Architecture Principles: The Cornerstones of Enterprise Architecture is the first book to focus on Software Architecture Principles. The author Danny Greefhorst and Erik Proper explain why such principles are important and how they can be practically expressed and applied in development projects, especially in an enterprise context.
- David C. Hay explains in his book Requirements Analysis how architects should map business goals to software architecture. Why should engineers care? The answer is “Garbage-in-Garbage-out”. Without knowing the business perspective and the requirements, software engineers can not provide an appropriate solution. However, Hay presents some recipes but not a full methodology. Nonetheless, the book is nice to read.
- Paris Avgeriou, Neil B. Harrison, Uwe Zdun, James Noble and Ralph Johnson are the editors of Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming II. In this book readers will find patterns and patterns languages that were presented at the PLoP conferences (Pattern Languages of Programming) conferences. Since the pattern writers were “shepherded” by patterns experts, the patterns in the book have a sound quality and are worth reading.
There are many more books which will be recently published. However, Ii you need any good book for your next summer vacation, the list above might be useful. If your spouse shouldn’t know: some of them are also available as ebooks.