Enterprise Architecture Overview
Before attempting to design and implement, what can sometimes be complex, enterprise solutions it is essential to follow a standard approach to architectural design such as the Enterpise Architecture approach put forward by Microsoft.
The Microsoft Enterprise Architecture approach forms part of the Microsoft Solutions Framework, an all encompassing framework that covers all aspects of the software development process, from team collaboration and project management to development and testing.
It is important to adopt a standard approach to enterprise architecture for the following reasons:
- It will be easier to communicate your approach to other members of your development team.
- It will be far easier to maintain and extend your architecture in future iterations of the application.
- It is far easier to integrate patterns and application blocks that follow the same enterprise architectural approach.
- There is an increased likelihood that the architecture will be reused on future projects.
Patterns and Common Practices
Software patterns are solutions to common software design problems and have been nurtured within the object-oriented software community over the last ten years.
Software patterns are usually language and platform indpendent and are generally documented with the help of an object-oriented modelling language such as the UML.
There are numerous resources available that describe patterns and best practices in more depth. A few are listed below:
Patterns are a very important tool available to the enterprise developer. They allow a developer to re-use years of previous design effort and remove the need to invent every element of a new solution from scratch. By basing your software solutions on previous proven designs, this greatly increases the chances of the new solution's success.
Examples of patterns include:
- Patterns to manage object state
- Controlling single object instances (Singleton)
- User Intrerface Patterns such as the Model-View-Controller
Microsoft Application Blocks
Microsoft Application Blocks are commonly used industrial strength source code blocks that can be integrated into your software projects. Application blocks are .NET specific implementations of generic patterns such as those for data access, exception handling and thread management.
A full list of the current application blocks supplied by Microsoft can be found on the Microsoft MSDN site by following this link..
Before writing any new infrastruture code for your enterprise solution if is advisable to check if there are any tried and tested application blocks available for you to use.
Summary
There is a wealth of information available to developers of enterprise applications, such as complex management information systems and e-commerce web applications. Before undertaking any large project it pays to research these resources for the current best practices and freely available 'application blocks'. It can save time, preventing you 're-inventing the wheel' and leads to more secure, scalable and robust software.