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Documenting the Architecture of Your Projects With the C4 Model

One of the definitions used to approach software architecture is that it is responsible for defining the parts of a project and the technological strategy. And, like any strategy, there must be an ongoing process of review and update. That's why, here on the Zup Open Source team, we're using the C4 model.

Having a view of your project's architecture is crucial in several aspects, as it helps you answer questions such as: how can my system integrate internally or with other systems? Or, how can I guarantee security between my applications? And so on.

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Developer’s Guide to Building Notification Systems: Part 1 – User Requirements

So your CTO has just handed you a project to revamp or build your product’s notification system. It seemed like a simple and straightforward project, but you started doing research and realized that not only is the process pretty complicated, there’s not a lot of information online on how to do it. After all, companies like LinkedIn, Uber, and Slack have large teams of over 25 employees working just on notifications. But smaller companies don’t have that luxury - so how can you meet the same level of quality with a team of one?

This can certainly be overwhelming, which is why we’ve created a blog post series to guide you through building the best notification system for your company. This is the first post in this series, and we’re introducing you to the essential user requirements for both developers and non-technical users of your notification system.

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Solution vs. Software Architecture

In my tenure as a solution architect in financial services working for a global consulting firm, I have often questioned the best way to practice enterprise architecture.  A common challenge that many architecture consultants face is that most client firms insist on using their proprietary enterprise architecture content. I have observed that frequently such architecture content does not always distinguish between the solution and software architecture.

This article is not an academic paper. In this article, I  present my experiences and ideas to help my colleagues better understand the vague differences between two similar but distinct architecture disciplines. At the very least, this article may trigger a conversation via the comments section that may persuade me that I am wrong.

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9 Best Software Architecture Books and Sites

Technical leaders and senior developers often ask me about any specific books in software architecture and websites they should read to start working as software architects. I think that the developer is mature enough to develop a technical solution and he or she needs only some additional soft skills.

So, I hope that this list of books will be useful for any technology stack and domain. These books and websites give general information about architecture patterns, technical documentation, techniques to get non-functional requirements and develop soft skills.

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The Power of Software Visualization

I thought I’d use our new 3D city view visualizations to have a closer look at Apache-Cassandra, a very popular and successful open source project that implements a NoSQL database. I know from previous analysis runs of the same software that it already had problems with structural erosion. Years ago I analyzed Cassandra 1.2.6 and found pretty big cycle groups for Java files as well as for packages. The maintainability level was only 9.4% (everything under 50% is concerning) while the metric “Propagation Cost” has a value of 62%. That means that every change will affect 62% of all code directly or indirectly which also is not a good thing because it significantly increases the chance of regression bugs.Visualization of 477 Java Files From Apache Cassandra

477 Java files form this big ball of mud in Apache-Cassandra 1.2.6

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Scalability :  Think in Terms Of TCO

A system that has the ability to easily scale resources to meet the increasing workload without affecting the performance is known as a scalable system. The workload could refer to anything from an increase in users, storage, or a number of transactions.

To make an easy-to-scale system, it is crucial to have an evolutionary way of thinking about the software development cycle. An architect should focus on designing a scalable software architecture from the early phase of the product life cycle.