What's the difference between Architectural Patterns and Architectural Styles?
ArchitectureArchitectural PatternsArchitecture Problem Overview
In Software Architecture - Foundations, Theory and Practice, I can find definitions for both. The problem is that I don't get what each one of them means in plain English:
Architectural Pattern
> An Architectural Pattern is a named collection of architectural design decisions that are applicable to a recurring design problem parameterized to account for different software development contexts in which that problem appears.
Architectural Style
> An Architectural Style is a named collection of architectural design decisions that (1) are applicable in a given development context, (2) constrain architectural design decisions that are specific to a particular system within that context, and (3) elicit beneficial qualities in each resulting system.
What does each one mean and what are the differences between them?
Architecture Solutions
Solution 1 - Architecture
An Architectural Pattern is a way of solving a recurring architectural problem. MVC, for instance, solves the problem of separating the UI from the model. Sensor-Controller-Actuator, is a pattern that will help you with the problem of actuating in face of several input senses.
An Architectural Style, on the other hand, is just a name given to a recurrent architectural design. Contrary to a pattern, it doesn't exist to "solve" a problem.
Pipe&filter doesn't solve any specific problem, it's just a way of organizing your code. Client/server, Main program & subroutine and Abstract Data Types / OO, the same.
Also, a single architecture can contain several architectural styles, and each architectural style can make use of several architectural patterns.
Solution 2 - Architecture
Architectural Style is abstract i.e. conceptual neither technology nor library.
| Category | Architecture styles |
|---|---|
| Communication | SOA, ROA, Message Bus |
| Deployment | Client/Server |
| Domain | Domain Driven Design,Monolithic, Mocroservice |
| Structure | Component-Based, Object-Oriented, Layered, Plug-ins |
| Other | Peer-to-peer, REST, Cloud computing, Internet of Things, Blockchain... |
An Architectural Pattern is concrete i.e. implementation of an Architectural Style.
- For example: 3-tier, N-tier, MVC, Model View ViewModel, Publish-subscribe,Sensor-controller-actuator...
A Design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design at architectural level.
- For example: Factory, Singleton, Prototype.
Analogy: Temples architecture style for different religions:
Solution 3 - Architecture
Frankly, I have always considered both these terms to be synonymous! And layman (relatively speaking) literature definitely treats them as such. Refer MSDN or Wikipedia
However, your question intrigued me a bit so I did a bit more digging and frankly...I couldn't find much except for a reference to A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture (The Coad Series), from which i quote:
>An architectural style (Base et al. 1997) and an architectural pattern (Buschmann et al. 1996) are essentially synonymous.
Based on some more googling, this is what I think might be one possible way to differentiate the two:
- An architectural style is a conceptual way of how the system will be created / will work.
- An architectural pattern describes a solution for implementing a style at the level of subsystems or modules and their relationships.
How an architectural pattern will differ from a Design pattern i.e. Adapter, observer is basically by the level of Granularity at which they are applied (I know this isn't part of the question but it's related, I think...)
Solution 4 - Architecture
In very simple words:
-
Is a concept, theory (and how it's implemented it is up to you). It can also apply to outside of the software world.
In example: REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style built on certain principles using the current “Web” fundamentals.
-
Describes a solution at the software system (or module) level. In other words how it interacts each other e.g. view with model, and model with controller.
-
Is a solution at the core level, it talks about classes, functions and how actually the logic flows.
Solution 5 - Architecture
In my view, patterns and architectural styles are complementary mechanisms for encapsulating design expertise. An architectural style provides a collection of building block design elements, rules and constraints for composing the building blocks, and tools for analyzing and manipulating designs created in the style. Styles generally provide guidance and analysis for building a broad class of architectures in a specific domain whereas patterns focus on solving smaller, more specific problems within a given style (or perhaps multiple styles).
Solution 6 - Architecture
Architectural design patterns are more domain specific where are architectural styles are more generic and usable in wide range of applications. Because of this architectural patterns requires more domain knowledge.
Solution 7 - Architecture
Architectural Styles
Architectural styles are names which represent the broader organizations of your applications subsystems and depict the idea of the overall outline of the it. Examples are, SOA, Client/Server, Message Bus etc.
Architectural Patterns
Architectural patterns are names of the reusable solutions to the general architectural problems which give an idea of how the inner parts are implemented to solve them. Examples are, 2-Tier, 3-Tier, N-Tier, MVC, REST etc.
One style can use multiple patterns to solve multiple problems. For example, a Client/Server style can use an N-Tier pattern or(and) an MVC pattern for separating its business logic, presentation logic and data logic for introducing modularity which solves modifiability and maintainability problems.
Solution 8 - Architecture
For Architectural Patterns think specific ways to style your code as described by the GoF like; Adapter, Strategy, Builder, Mediator, etc
For Architectural Style think overall system; I.E., using MVC for presentation, DDD to model the business layer, WCF (if you're into .NET) for Interop, SOA for integration, etc.
Solution 9 - Architecture
Architectural Patterns – define a general set of element types and their interactions. Examples of Architectural Patterns include Pipes and Filters, Model–View–Controller, and Reflection.
Architectural Style – the term was coined by Garlan and Shaw, it is an idiomatic pattern of system organization. For example, a client–server system is an architectural style.
p.s : Many of the original architectural styles have been reformulated as patterns.
Solution 10 - Architecture
Architecture style describes a system of many components. There is only one application architecture and you have to apply the one architectural style like Microservices, SOA, and event-driven architecture everywhere.
Architecture patterns describe something inside a single component and do not try to apply the same architectural patterns like CQRS or DDD everywhere.
Solution 11 - Architecture
Architectural styles tell us, in very broad strokes, how to organize our code. It’s the highest level of granularity and it specifies layers, high-level modules of the application and how those modules and layers interact with each other, the relations between them. Examples of Architectural Styles: Component-based, SOA
Architectural Patterns have an extensive impact on the code base, most often impacting the whole application either horizontally (ie. how to structure the code inside a layer) or vertically (ie. how a request is processed from the outer layers into the inner layers and back). Examples of Architectural Patterns: Model-View-Controller, Model-View-ViewModel
Solution 12 - Architecture
Architecture pattern: context + problem -> solution
Architecture style: solution part of architecture pattern
So architecture style is analogous to the solution part of the architecture pattern. It's often used in books dealing with architecture documentation where the focus is on the solution and not how the context and problem came about.