Architecture Styles

Architecture Styles Expertise

Architecture styles define high-level structural organization of software systems. I select and implement appropriate styles based on business requirements, team capabilities, and scalability needs.

Layered (N-Tier) Architecture

• Separation of Concerns: Organizing applications into distinct layers (Presentation, Business Logic, Data Access) with clear responsibilities. Implementing strict layer boundaries and dependency rules.

  Using layered architecture for traditional web applications, enterprise systems, and monoliths. Understanding when layered architecture is appropriate versus when it becomes over-engineered.

• Clean Architecture: Applying Clean Architecture principles with dependency inversion, domain-centric design, and infrastructure independence. Organizing layers by dependency rule with domain at the center.

  Implementing entities, use cases, interface adapters, and frameworks/drivers layers. Ensuring business logic remains independent of frameworks, databases, and external services.

Microservices Architecture

• Service Decomposition: Identifying service boundaries based on business capabilities and domain boundaries. Designing services that are independently deployable and scalable.

  Applying Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles for service boundaries. Understanding bounded contexts and how they map to microservices. Avoiding distributed monolith anti-pattern.

• Service Communication: Implementing synchronous (REST, gRPC) and asynchronous (messaging, event streaming) communication patterns. Handling service discovery, API gateways, and inter-service authentication.

  Managing service contracts, versioning, and backward compatibility. Implementing circuit breakers, retries, and timeouts for resilient service communication.

• Data Management: Implementing database per service pattern while managing data consistency across services. Using saga pattern, event sourcing, or distributed transactions where appropriate.

  Handling eventual consistency, distributed transactions, and data synchronization challenges. Implementing CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) for read/write optimization.

Event-Driven Architecture

• Event Sourcing: Storing state changes as sequences of events. Reconstructing current state by replaying events. Enabling time travel, audit logs, and temporal queries.

  Implementing event stores, event handlers, and snapshots for performance. Handling event versioning, schema evolution, and event replay strategies.

• Pub/Sub Messaging: Implementing publish-subscribe patterns for decoupled, asynchronous communication. Using message brokers (RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, AWS SNS/SQS) for reliable event distribution.

  Designing event schemas, handling message ordering, and ensuring exactly-once or at-least-once delivery semantics. Implementing event handlers with idempotency and error handling.

• Reactive Systems: Building responsive, resilient, and elastic systems using reactive principles. Implementing backpressure, non-blocking I/O, and reactive streams.

  Using reactive frameworks (Rx.NET, Reactive Extensions) for asynchronous event processing. Designing systems that respond to load and failures gracefully.

Hexagonal Architecture (Ports & Adapters)

• Ports and Adapters: Isolating core business logic from external concerns through ports (interfaces) and adapters (implementations). Enabling testing and technology independence.

  Defining primary ports (use cases) and secondary ports (repositories, external services). Implementing adapters for databases, APIs, file systems, and UI frameworks.

• Dependency Inversion: Ensuring dependencies point inward toward domain logic. External frameworks and libraries depend on domain abstractions, not vice versa.

  Implementing dependency injection to wire adapters to ports. Maintaining clear boundaries between application core and infrastructure concerns.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

• Service Design: Creating reusable, interoperable services with well-defined contracts. Implementing services that can be discovered, composed, and orchestrated.

  Using service contracts (WSDL, OpenAPI) for service description. Implementing service orchestration and choreography patterns for business process execution.

• Enterprise Integration: Connecting disparate systems through standardized service interfaces. Using ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) or API Gateway patterns for service integration.

  Implementing service governance, versioning, and lifecycle management. Handling service discovery, routing, and transformation in enterprise environments.