Software architecture: reflections on an evolving discipline

Software Architecture emerged in the 1990's as an important sub-field of software engineering. While good architectural design had long been recognized as critical to the success of any complex software system, before then the practice of architecting had relied largely on ad hoc, uncodified, and idiosyncratic techniques and knowledge. By the 2000's the field had matured to the point where there were widely-recognized taxonomies of architectural patterns, techniques for formally representing and analyzing architectures, methods for reviewing an architectural design, widespread adoption of architectural product lines and composition frameworks, and techniques for ensuring conformance between an architecture and an implementation of it. In this talk we reflect on the key enablers of a discipline of software architecture that led to these advances, the central ideas that form its core, and its enduring principles that continue to shape the field of software engineering. We consider both the important concepts on which it builds, as well as those that have built on top of it. Finally, we examine some of the important new trends and challenges that are likely to have an impact on how software architecture will evolve in the future.