Some Patterns for Software Architecture

Software designers rely on informal patterns, or idioms, to describe the architectures of their software systems - the configurations of components that make up the systems. At the first PLoP, I identified seven patterns that guide high-level system design and discussed the way they guide the composition of systems from particular types of components [PLoP94]. This paper extends the descriptions of those patterns (plus one) in response to the discussion at the conference. Most significantly, it adds information on the kinds of problems each pattern handles best.