Instructor

Nenad Medvidovic

Overview

Software architecture has become increasingly important in the last 15 years in the software engineering community. At the heart of every well-engineered software system is its software architecture. Software architecture deals with the high level building blocks that represent an underlying software system. These building blocks are the components (units of computation in a system), the connectors (models of the interactions between software components), and the configurations (arrangements of software components and connectors, and the rules that guide their composition). Software architectures that are found particularly useful for families of systems are often codified into architectural styles.
This course will afford the student a complete treatment of software architecture, its foundation, principles, and elements, including those described above. The class is centered around reading assignments, and homework that will test understanding of the course material. A class project will require the student to leverage the architectural techniques learned during the course (e.g., architectural recovery, architectural styles, domain specific software architectures) to design and implement a real-world software system.
In addition to foundations, and practical experience with software architectures, the class will also introduce the student to the state-of-the-art in software architecture research, future trends and state-of-the-practice. Students are expected to attend class regularly, and participate (as directed) in all class discussions.

Week

Lecture Topic

Readings

Assignments and Exams