If you are a business developer, you may want to say, I do CRUD all day long, where do I need to know anything about application architecture design?
It is often said that programmers are easily bottlenecked and eliminated from the industry after the age of 35, and I think the reason is actually here.
When some friends write code, they may not give much consideration to non-functional requirements, extensibility, just complete the function, and feel that it can be used as long as it is good. When doing things, there is also no long-term planning, just do the things in front of you and be satisfied.
I've interviewed a lot of older candidates whose resumes are more than ten pages long and have dozens of project experiences. However, upon closer inspection, each project is just a repetitive stack of business logic, lacking in difficulty progression, and the ability to improve is not obvious.
The accumulation of such a person for ten years may be no different from that of one year. How can such a person not be eliminated from the industry?
As we get older and the Internet landscape gets more and more rolled up, architectural thinking and design knowledge is a must.
What is the application architecture?
Application architecture defines the structure and behavior of application systems in an enterprise. It is not just as simple as building a few systems; it is more important to consider the relationships between these systems and how they work together to meet business needs.
Through application architecture, we can clearly identify the application systems required to support business and data processing, and realize the transformation from business requirements to IT systems.
An excellent application architecture allows the system to be both stable and flexible for expansion and upgrading to quickly respond to changes in market demand.
The design steps of an application architecture generally include:
- Based on the business architecture, complete the conversion of business to IT systems and identify core application services.
- Delineate the application structure and design the application structure in relation to business processes and data.
- Design the interaction and integration relationships between application structures.
application service
Application services play a vital role in application architecture, which packages the core functions of the system and provides them for external use, which can be regarded as the external "facade" of the system, and users or other systems can realize specific business functions by calling application services.
From an external perspective, application services usually come with clear business implications, such as placing an order, making a payment, checking inventory, and so on. The design of these services must be closely centered on business requirements to ensure that they can efficiently support the execution of business processes.
The concept of application services stems from the rise of SOA and microservice architectures. By splitting system functionality into multiple independent services, the maintainability, scalability and flexibility of the system can be improved.
The concept of application services stems from the rise of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and microservice architecture. By modularizing the functions of a system into multiple independent services, it not only improves the maintainability of the system, but also enhances its scalability and flexibility. Each service can be developed, deployed and upgraded independently, so that even if the business requirements change, only the relevant services need to be adjusted without drastically modifying the whole system.
The greatest value of a service-oriented architecture is its agility and flexibility.
Agility is reflected in the fact that services can be quickly adapted and evolve independently. Flexibility is reflected in the fact that each service has clear business boundaries, strong functional cohesion, and the ability to manage the lifecycle separately.
Through the combination and orchestration of services, the system can quickly respond to business changes, support complex business processes, and build a technology infrastructure that is both robust and flexible.
application architecture
The application structure describes the hierarchical and organizational relationships within the application system, which determines the degree of modularity of the system and the subsequent difficulty of development and maintenance.
In application architecture design, we usually abstract the system into different levels. For example, the system is divided into system level, application level, module level, and code level.
This division of abstraction levels helps us deal with complexity at different levels and ensures that the system structure is clear and easy to maintain. As shown in the figure:
- System level:The focus is on the overall layout and governance of the systems, such as the relationship between the systems and how they work together.
- Application level:Focus on the overall architecture of each application, including how the application interacts with other applications and the role of each application in the overall system.
- Module level:Further refinement of the internal of the application, it involves the modular design of the code, the management of data and state, and so on. Through reasonable module division, the maintainability and reusability of the code can be improved and duplication of efforts can be reduced.
- Code Level:The concern is with the structure and implementation of the code itself. This level of design has a direct impact on the quality and implementation details of the code.
Levels of abstraction exist primarily to help us better manage the complexity of the system.
1. Decomposition complexity
If all the details are mixed together, the whole system will become difficult to understand, maintain and extend. By setting different levels of abstraction, we can break down the complexity of the system to various levels, each of which only needs to focus on specific functions and responsibilities.
This layered approach allows developers to focus on one part of the system without having to pay too much attention to the details of other parts, thus greatly simplifying the system design and development process.
2. Clear boundaries for teamwork
In large projects, there are usually multiple teams developing in parallel. If the system does not have clear boundaries, conflicts and duplication of effort can easily arise between teams.
With clear abstraction levels, different teams can focus on different levels or modules of the system without interfering with each other.
3. Strong scalability
As business requirements change, systems often need to be constantly extended and upgraded. If the architectural design of the system does not have a reasonable level of abstraction, expansion and upgrading will become extremely difficult and may even trigger a complete reorganization of the system.
Whereas in systems with levels of abstraction, changes often only need to be focused on a specific level without affecting the entire system. For example, if a business transformation only affects the module level, we can replace or add a module to meet new business requirements without changing the overall system architecture.
Application Interaction
Application interaction refers to the way data is exchanged and communicated between different applications or components.
In a complex system, applications do not exist in isolation; they often need to collaborate with each other to accomplish more complex business processes.
Application interactions are designed to ensure that these systems and components can smoothly "talk" to each other and realize the overall functionality of the system.
There are various forms of application interaction, including synchronous invocation, asynchronous messaging, event-driven, and so on. Each type of interaction has its own specific application scenario and advantages and disadvantages.
For example, synchronous invocation is usually used in those scenarios that require immediate response. After the user submits an order in the front-end, the system will immediately invoke the order service to create the order, which has the advantage of guaranteeing the real-time nature of the request, but it also requires that all the parts of the system work properly at the time of invocation.
In contrast, asynchronous messaging is suitable for scenarios that do not require an immediate response, for example, after an order is created, the order service can send the order creation message to the message queue, and the fulfillment service can process this message at the appropriate time. The advantage of this approach is that it improves the decoupling of the system and avoids performance bottlenecks caused by synchronized calls when the system is under high load.
Through reasonable interaction design, all parts of the system can work together efficiently, reduce coupling and increase system flexibility. At the same time, good interaction design can also significantly improve the performance and fault tolerance of the system, even in the case of high traffic access and complex business requirements, it still maintains stable operation.
put at the end
Application architecture defines the structure and behavior of enterprise applications, emphasizing relationships and collaboration between systems.
The application architecture enables the identification of systems that support business and data processing, and realizes the transformation from business requirements to IT systems. The design steps include the transformation of business to IT systems, the design of the application architecture and its interactions.
Application services are the core functional modules of the system, derived from SOA and microservice architecture, which enhances the maintainability and flexibility of the system.
Application architecture, on the other hand, describes the hierarchical structure of the system, helping to manage complexity and facilitate teamwork and system expansion. Application interaction design ensures that data is exchanged and communicated between system components in an efficient manner, improving system performance and fault tolerance.