Software Architect

Books

• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

Web

• Wards Wiki - http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors
• http://www.java.net/
• http://www.theserverside.com/
• http://www.kanneganti.com/technical/
• http://martinfowler.com/

Approaches

• Make a list of everything you don't understand
• Pattern-observance ability
• Be aware of all trends - database, java, web
• Keep searching for competing products
• Weekend ideas
• Make a roadmap and track your growth

Basics to cover

• UML
• Design patterns
• Interprocess communication
• JMS, JMX
• Annotations
• REST
• Tomcat working mechanism
• JVM spec
• Anonymous classes - various UCs
• Closure
• UNIX
• Load balancing
• performance testing
• profiling
• diagnostics
• stress/load testing
• junits / alternates
• how to write code with minimal memory footprint in java
• sharing code between JVMs
• Control class loading
• PMD/Checkstyle common terminology
• Logging
• Exception Handling

Frameworks to learn

• Caramel
• Mithra
• Mojo
• WireObjects
• SmartParams
• NoSQL

Principles to keep in mind

• Scalability
• Maintainability
• Extensibility
• Testability
• Efficiency
• Orthogonality