By Patrick van Bergen

Introduction

The idea behind this site is to give myself and other programmers a high-level easy-to-understand overview of common architectural patterns in software. It is meant as a source of inspiration for those who are asked to create some program and have really no idea what it should look like or where to start. I hope you enjoy it.

New version!

A new version of this website is available at architectural-patterns.net.

Architectural patterns

Each architecture is unique. However, some patterns are common in the history of software development. These are called architectural patterns. At least some of them will be familiar to you.

1. Model-View-Controller
2. Presentation-Abstraction-Control
3. Pipe-And-Filter
4. Layered Systems
5. Microkernel
6. Client-Server and N-Tier Systems
7. Repository
8. Blackboard
9. Finite State Machine
10. Process Control
11. Multi Agent System
12. Broker a.k.a. Service Oriented Architecture
13. Master-Slave
14. Interpreter a.k.a. Virtual Machine
15. Hub-And-Spoke
16. Message Bus a.k.a. Event Bus
17. Structural Model
18. Ports-And-Adapters a.k.a. Hexagonal Architecture
19. Peer-to-peer
20. Event sourcing
21. CQRS

Books

• Software Architecture - Perspectives on an emerging discipline (1996). The original work on Software Architecture, but not a good reference. Not recommended.
• Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, Volume 1: A System of Patterns (1996). This is the best book available on Architectural Patterns. However, it only handles 7 patterns in-depth.
• Software Architecture in Practice, Second Edition (2003). The standard work on Software Architecture. This is where you start to become a software architect.