Tag Archives: Enterprise Applications

Software Design, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 15 – Advanced Software Design

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Why do I need to learn about advanced software design?
I think that I already learned about software design in the Topic 12 – Introduction to Software Design.

Now your task is not just to build a house.  Your task is to build a city. The situation is similar to when you create complex software. Now, you are responsible for creating a software system containing about 10,000 classes or functions for 5,000 people to use in 15 years. The maximum system downtime must be less than 5 minutes per year.

Image that you have to create a system that serves millions of people simultaneously like Facebook or YouTube or Amazon or Office 365 or GMail. Are you confident in handling this connection volume?

Image that you are tasked to create a web framework for developers to extend such as ASP.NET or Yii or React.js. Are you confident in creating one?

If you are not sure how to fulfill these tasks then probably, you should learn how other people crafted similar systems and adapt their experiences to your case. Advanced software design knowledge will then be useful for you.

What can I do after finishing learning advanced software design?

You will know how to design a complex software system that satisfies not only functional requirements but also security, modifiability, scalability, reusability, extensibility and reliability requirements.

That sounds interesting! What should I do now?

Advanced software design requires a lot of reading. Please do review the software design knowledge introduced to you in the Topic 12 – Introduction to Software Design first. Nowadays software can be applied to many fields. Each of them requires specific advanced software design knowledge. In this topic, we only focus on enterprise software due to its popularity.

Before you design a complicated system you must thoroughly  understand its sophisticated requirements. This is a critical step when building a large system.

Please read this David C. Hay (2002). Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture. Prentice Hall PTR book to learn how to elicit, analyze and document requirements for an enterprise system.

After that please read this Philip A. Bernstein and Eric Newcomer (2009). Principles of Transaction Processing. Second Edition. Morgan Kaufmann book to learn about transactional processing principles and techniques.

After that please read  this Martin Kleppmann (2016). Making Sense of Stream Processing. O’Reilly Media book to learn about event sourcing and stream processing.

After that please read
– this Eric Evans (2003). Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software. Addison Wesley book, and
– this Jimmy Nilsson (2006). Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello (2014). Microsoft .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise. Microsoft Press book, and
– this Vaughn Vernon (2013). Implementing Domain-Driven Design. Addison-Wesley Professional book
to learn about domain-driven design approach.

After that please read
– this Mark Endrei et al. (2004). Patterns: Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services. IBM Corp book, and
– this Sam Newman (2021). Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems. O’Reilly book, and
– this Sam Newman (2019). Monolith to Microservices – Evolutionary Patterns to Transform Your Monolith. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Cloves Carneiro and Tim Schmelmer (2016). Microservices From Day One. Apress book to learn about microservices.

After that please watch
– this Distributed Systems, UC Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering, 2021 course, and
– this MIT 6.824, Distributed Systems, Spring 2020 course to learn how to design a large-scale distributed system.

After finishing the books please click Topic 16 – Calculus to continue.

 

Database Management Systems, Software Engineering Curriculum

Topic 14 – Introduction to Database Design

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Why do I need to learn about database design?

Database is the heart of any software system, especially enterprise systems. A bad database design will eventually cause your system fail. Designing enterprise databases requires a lot of specific enterprise knowledge and in-depth understanding of structure of big databases. That’s why you need to learn about database design.

What can I do after finishing learning about database design?

You will know how to design a relational database and write SQL code PROPERLY (i.e. for specific purposes). You will know how to build a data warehouse. You will know WHEN you should use a relational database management system or WHEN you should use a NoSQL database management system and HOW they actually work.

That sounds useful! What should I do now?

Please read this Stephane Faroult and Peter Robson (2006). The Art of SQL. O’Reilly Media book first to learn how to write SQL code efficiently.

Then please read
– this W.H. Inmon (2003). Building The Data Warehouse. Wiley book and
– this Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross (2002). The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling. Wiley book and
– this Vincent Rainardi (2008). Building a Data Warehouse: With Examples in SQL Server. Apress book to learn how to build a data warehouse.

After that please read this Abraham Silberschatz et al. (2019). Database System Concepts. McGraw-Hill Education book to learn about concepts that will help you understand how distributed databases work later.

After that please read
– this Pramod J. Sadalage and Martin Fowler (2012). NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence. Addison-Wesley Professional book, and
– this Martin Kleppmann (2017). Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems. O’Reilly Media book, and
– this Alex Petrov (2019). Database Internals. O’Reilly Media book
to learn how to design distributed databases and how distributed databases work.

And finally please read
– this C. J. Date (2019). Database Design and Relational Theory: Normal Forms And All That Jazz. Apress book and
– this C. J. Date (2015). SQL and Relational Theory: How to Write Accurate SQL Code. O’Reilly Media book to learn about normal forms and relational theory behind relational databases for creating more efficient logical designs for your databases.

After finishing the books please click Topic 15 – Advanced Software Design to continue.