What is the difference between design and architecture

Example: Think about your house, you don't need an architect for your kitchen only one element involved but the complete building needs some interaction definitions, like doors, and a roof. Design is a informative representation of the proposed implementation of the function. It is intended to elicit feedback and to discuss with stakeholders.

It might be good practice but is not an essential engineering step. It would be nice to see the kitchen design see before the kitchen is installed but it is not essential for the cooking requirement :. I think we should use the following rule to determine when we talk about Design vs Architecture: If the elements of a software picture you created can be mapped one to one to a programming language syntactical construction, then is Design, if not is Architecture. So, for example, if you are seeing a class diagram or a sequence diagram, you are able to map a class and their relationships to an Object Oriented Programming language using the Class syntactical construction.

This is clearly Design. In addition, this might bring to the table that this discussion has a relation with the programming language you will use to implement a software system. If you come up with a diagram that shows packages and its dependencies, that is Design too.

You can map the element a package in this case to a Java syntactical construction. Now, suppose your Java application is divided in modules, and each module is a set of packages represented as a jar file deployment unit , and you are presented with a diagram containing modules and its dependencies, then, that is Architecture.

You might also notice that this diagram represents a step higher in the level of abstraction of your software model. Any diagram above coarse grained than a package diagram, represents an Architectural view when developing in the Java programming language. On the other hand, if you are developing in Modula-2, then, a module diagram represents a Design.

I agree with many of the explanations; essentially we are recognizing the distinction between the architectural design and the detailed design of the software systems. While the goal of the designer is to be as precise and concrete in the specifications as it will be necessary for the development; the architect essentially aims at specifying the structure and global behavior of the system just as much as required for the detailed design to begin with.

A good architect will prevent hyper-specifications - the architecture must not be overly specified but just enough, the architectural decisions established only for the aspects that present costliest risks to handle, and effectively provide a framework "commonality" within which the detailed design can be worked upon i. Indeed, the architecture process or life-cycle just follows this theme - adequate level of abstraction to outline the structure for the architecturally significant business requirements, and leave more details to the design phase for more concrete deliverables.

Architecture is design, but not all design is architectural. Therefore, strictly speaking, it would make more sense to try to differentiate between architectural design and non-architectural design. And what is the difference? It depends! Each software architect may have a different answer ymmv! We develop our heuristics to come up with an answer, such as 'class diagrams are architecture and sequence diagrams are design'. See DSA book for more. It's common to say that architecture is at a higher abstraction level than design, or architecture is logical and design is physical.

But this notion, albeit commonly accepted, is in practice useless. Where do you draw the line between high or low abstraction, between logical and physical? Having said all that That is, when should I stop describing the design in diagrams or prose and should move on to coding? Yep that sounds right to me. The design is what you're going to do, and architecture is the way in which the bits and pieces of the design will be joined together. The software architecture of a program or computing system is the structure or structures of the system, which comprise software components, the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them.

Software design is a process of problem-solving and planning for a software solution. After the purpose and specifications of software are determined, software developers will design or employ designers to develop a plan for a solution. It includes low-level component and algorithm implementation issues as well as the architectural view.

I view architecture as Patrick Karcher does - the big picture. For example, you can provide the architecture to a building, view its structural support, the windows, entries and exits, water drainage, etc. But you have not "designed" the floor layout's, cubicle positions etc.

So while you've architected the building you have not designed the layout of each office. I think the same holds true for software. Good question Architecture is specifically not about…details of implementations e. Design is concerned with the modularization and detailed interfaces of the design elements, their algorithms and procedures, and the data types needed to support the architecture and to satisfy the requirements.

Defining the Terms Architecture, Design, and Implementation. Architecture: Structural design work at higher levels of abstraction which realize technically significant requirements into the system.

The architecture lays down foundation for further design. Design: The art of filling in what the architecture does not through an iterative process at each layer of abstraction.

Statements on the nature of the software that are non-local and intensional are architectural. Statements that are local and intensional are design. Architecture is about relationship, which requires the many. Architecture has components. Design is about content, which requires the one. Design has properties, qualities, characteristics. We typically think that design is within architecture. Dualistic thinking gives the many as primordial.

But architecture is also within design. It's all how we choose to view what is before us - the one or the many. Architecture The overall design of the system including interactions with other systems, hardware requirement, overall component design, and data flow. Design The organization and flow of a component in the overall system. This would also include the component's API for interaction with other components. Software architecture is best used at the system level, when you need to project business and functions identify by higher architecture levels into applications.

For instance, your business is about "Profit and Loss" for traders, and your main functions involved "portfolio evaluation" and "risk computation". But when a Software Architect will details his solution, he will realize that:. It needs to be refined in manageable projects like:. It will produce the specifications needed for the last Architecture layer the "Technical Architecture" to work on in term of technical framework or transversal components , and for the project teams more oriented on the implementation of the business functions to begin their respective projects.

For him, engine-construction will be "design work". If he then delegates the construction of the engine to another team, they will create an "engine architecture" So - it depends on the level of abstraction or detail. One persons' architecture might be anothers' design! After working with TDD, which practically means that your design changes all the time, I often found myself struggling with this question. It means that the architecture depends on the Language, Framework and the Domain of your system.

If your can just extract an interface from your Java Class in 5 minutes it is no longer and architecture decision.

Software design has a longer history while the term software architecture is barely 20 years old. Hence, it is going through growing pains right now. Academics tend to see Architecture as part of the larger field of software design. Although there is growing recognition that Arch is a field within it's own. Practitioners tend to see Arch as high-level design decisions that are strategic and can be costly in a project to undo.

The exact line between Arch and design depends on the software domain. For instance, in the domain of Web Applications, the layered architecture is gaining the most popularity currently Biz Logic Layer, Data Access Layer, etc.

The lower level parts of this Arch are considered design class diagrams, method signatures, etc. This would be defined differently in the domains of embedded systems, operating systems, compilers, etc. Architecture is high level, abstract and logical design whereas software design is low level,detailed and physical design. I like Roy Thomas Fielding's definition and explanation about what is software architecture in his paper: Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures.

A software architecture is an abstraction of the run-time elements of a software system during some phase of its operation. A system may be composed of many levels of abstraction and many phases of operation, each with its own software architecture. There is no definitive answer to this because "software architecture" and "software design" have quite a number of definitions and there isn't a canonical definition for either. A good way of thinking of it is Len Bass, Paul Clements and Rick Kazman's statement that "all architecture is design but not all design is architecture" [Software Architecture in Practice].

I'm not sure I quite agree with that because architecture can include other activities but it captures the essence that architecture is a design activity that deals with the critical subset of design.

My slightly flippant definition found on the SEI definitions page is that it's the set of decisions which, if made wrongly, cause your project to get cancelled. Other 0. Once the hatch command has been selected it now displays the hatch ribbon tab,.

How do you add a revision triangle in AutoCAD? To draw a triangle: In. Click on the end. How do you find distance and bearing in Autocad? How do you plot distance. In the inaugural post of Form Follows Function, I noted the definition of architecture that I felt best applied across the realms of Application, Solution, and Enterprise Architecture.

Although the distinction might seem to be academic at first glance, it cuts to the heart of questions around the value of architecture and architects, particularly under Agile processes.

This makes the confusion alluded to above by Ilan Kirschenbaum doubly worrisome. Thus design, architectural or not, can be defined as making the optimal choice to satisfy the various forces impacting the matter at hand. Non-local specifications, applying to the system as a whole, constitute architecture in their opinion. The authors identify global design decisions as strategic and local design decisions as tactical:.

Strategic design statements [11] articulate design decisions that determine the primary behavioural and structural properties of a program software system. Strategic decisions address global, system-wide concerns and carry the most consequential implications. Because of the consequences they carry, Strategic decisions must be made early in the software development process and should be established explicitly before any detailed design is carried out.

In contrast, Tactical design [11] statements articulate design decisions that are concerned with a specific module. Tactical decisions often describe a pattern of correlations between one collection of modules objects, procedures, classes etc.

This is the reason that I do not hold the opinion that functional requirements are design and non-functional are architecture. Architecture comprises the major components of a system; their relationships and interactions.

Data and behavior of these major components is only relevant to architecture from the point of view of the interactions between these components.