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Reviewer: Nancy R. Mead

Bosch based this book on his work and that of his students and colleagues. The first part of the book, “The Design of Software Architectures,” focuses on the architectural design approach, which includes three major phases: functionality-based architectural design, architecture assessment, and architecture transformation. There is a good discussion of quality attributes, such as performance, maintainability, safety, reliability, and security, in addition to the discussion of functionality. The second part, “Software Product Lines,” deals with product line architectures, and with the efficiencies gained from such an approach. Traditional and object-oriented frameworks are discussed. Organizational models for developing product line architectures are presented, and the author considers industry experience. The book's 15 chapters are as follows: “Software Architecture and Product Lines,” “Design of Software Architectures,” “Software Architectural Design: Case Studies,” “Functionality-Based Architectural Design,” “Assessing Software Architectures,” “Transformation of Software Architectures,” “Software Product Lines: An Introduction,” “Software Product Lines: Case Studies,” “Designing a Product-Line Architecture,” “Developing Components: Traditional,” “Developing Components: O bject-Oriented Frameworks,” “Family-Based System Development,” “Evol ving Product-Line Assets,” “Organizing for Software Product Lines,” and “Industrial Experiences.” Bosch provides an extensive reference list, but no exercises or appendices. Many examples throughout the book illustrate his points. Many of the chapters provide suggestions for further reading and concluding or summary remarks. I was a little surprised at the book's editorial lapses, such as the typos in the foreword (“Brooch” instead of “Booch” and “grow” instead of “grown”). Also, the table of contents shows Part 1 as “The Designing of Software Architectures” rather than “The Design of Software Architectures.” The rest of the book seems to have been given better editorial attention, although there are places where the phrasing seems a bit awkward. The book has a practitioner orientation, and is intended for software architects or engineers who are engaged in software architecture activities. It could be used for a course in software architectures, but may not provide a sufficient survey of architecture techniques, since it focuses on the work of the author and his colleagues and students. Thus, it is best used by practitioners of software architecture, as the author intended. Although it attempts to be tutorial, I do not think it could be used as the sole source of information about software architectures. It is best used to supplement the reader's knowledge, in conjunction with other books and papers.