One might imagine Architectural Patterns(AP) are same as Software Design Patterns(SDP) but with an architectural twist, while in reality the realm of Architectural Patterns is much broader than that of SDP. Microsoft Corp refer to the AP as Architectural Styles. While one can depict the architecture in conjunction with patterns but patterns are not just a great definition and solution to parts of the architecture. To better understand this lets talk about the steering mechanism used in cars. That is a pattern so is the fuel delivery system they are concepts with abstract meaning and materialized implementations. When someone talks about the fuel delivery system you don't need to see how they implement it but can visualize the how it might be materialized. Now as many types of vehicles can implement the pattern steering same goes for APs.
Figure one shows two sub-domains, service and data architecture and the the list APs related to them. The bar at the bottoms shows solution and design patterns which cross these two domains. We will visit each of these APs and related SDPs and Solution Patterns.
Architectural sub-domains
Sub-domains deal with compartments we have in an overall solution architecture. in most cases APs deal with sub-domains. Some APs to sub-domains relations are:
