What Is Enterprise Application Architecture and How to Design It?
This article explains the definition of application architecture, distinguishes enterprise‑level and system‑level designs, outlines its core components—application services, structure, and interaction—and illustrates layered architectures and service interactions with diagrams, helping readers understand how to translate business architecture into concrete IT solutions.
Origin
Business architecture defines the enterprise‑level blueprint, while application architecture describes how to realize that blueprint through concrete services and systems.
What Is Application Architecture?
Application architecture can be divided into two levels: enterprise‑level application architecture, which provides a unified plan across the organization, and system‑level application architecture, which designs the modules, functions, and technical implementation of an individual system.
What Does Application Architecture Include?
It mainly consists of application services, application structure, and application interaction. Application services define which services (applications) exist, application structure defines the internal organization of a service, and application interaction defines the calls and dependencies between services.
Application Services
From a layered perspective, application services align with business architecture.
Examples of application services are illustrated below.
Application Structure
System structure is hierarchical.
Application structure is also layered.
Application Interaction
Defines the dependencies and call relationships between applications, including upstream/downstream direction, synchronous or asynchronous invocation, and technologies such as HTTP, RPC, message queues, shared databases, file transfer, and service bus.
Afterword
Application architecture is the implementation and support of business architecture. A well‑designed application architecture clearly defines the future IT construction blueprint.
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