Architecture

When storing data, most data have a lifecycle - it created, managed and eventually deleted through operation of the application or script that use it. There are however to kinds of data storage which is slightly different, which developers should know about as they may be nice patterns to know and use when applicable.

Emphemeral data

The first data storage is emphemeral data. This kind of data will eventually automatically be deleted. In most cases the data is stored shortly - an hour, a day or a week - but there isn’t any fixed rule which define when the data disappear - just that it does by itself without any explicit cleanup or pruning from the developer (or user).

In (domain or enterprise software) architecture, there are to generic patterns you’ll likely come across often, yet many developers does not seem to be familiar with them and knowing a bit about them may help understand why some choices are made when building a complete software stack across a company or enterprise.

These are:

• Best of suite
• Best of Breed.

When adopting the “best of suite” strategy, the Enterprise Architecture will seek to find big software suites, which can over a large domains. One of the most often picked suites is often Microsoft OFfice, where Word, Excel, Powerpoint and the other applications included in Microsoft office comes a single package - a suite.

Most IT departments have the best intentions of providing the best quality, coherent solutions, yet market conditions, projects running in parallel and various constraints on budgets, resources or time, often causes what might be defined as Accidental Architecture.

The easiest way to identify cases where you’ve been hit by accidental architecture is when describing your it architecture and look for the works “except” or “but not”. Typical examples include - we have a single-sign system utilized everywhere except…”, “We update all systems to current versions, but not this old system…”.