Key Considerations for Software Architecture: Functionality, Variability, Performance, Capacity, Ecosystem, Modularity, Buildability, Productization, and Security

Although the opening paragraph promotes a job‑matching platform, the main body provides a comprehensive guide to software architecture for large‑scale applications.

When receiving system requirements, architects should first consider the operating environment (server OS, deployment location, expected concurrency, security needs) rather than UI layout.

Successful architects balance stakeholder involvement with both functional and quality concerns. Key quality attributes include:

Functionality: What features does the product provide to users?

Variability: Which future changes are likely and should be easy to implement?

Performance: Desired performance characteristics of the product.

Capacity: Expected concurrent users and data storage needs.

Ecosystem: Interactions with other systems in the deployment environment.

Modularity: How to decompose work into independently developable modules.

Buildability: Construction of components that can be independently built and verified, and decisions about reuse or external suppliers.

Productization: Strategies for product lines, variant management, and incremental development.

Security: Authentication, data access restrictions, and protection against attacks such as DDoS.

Architecture evaluation can be performed via performance modeling (throughput, scalability) and reliability modeling (failure‑tree analysis), as well as through direct questioning of architects to uncover trade‑off risks.

For large‑scale systems, especially MMOs, scalability is achieved through distributed architectures that can add or remove machines based on load, and by designing read‑heavy workloads where most accesses are reads.

Two primary MMO scaling approaches are described: geographic partitioning (assigning different world regions to separate servers) and logical partitioning (replicating congested zones on independent servers, though this limits cross‑partition interaction).

Source: http://www.jianshu.com/p/96f6430c6c70