Essential Software Architecture is a concise yet comprehensive guide for aspiring and practicing software architects. Structured into three sections, it begins by defining software architecture and its core components—structure, quality attributes, and abstraction. It introduces a real-world case study (ICDE system) to illustrate concepts. The second part covers architectural fundamentals: middleware, service-oriented design, architecture processes, and documentation workflows. The final part explores emerging paradigms—enterprise architecture, model-driven design, aspect-oriented approaches, software product lines, RESTful services, ESBs, Semantic Web, and agile development—using the MeDICi framework as a running example .

John Powell notes it "concisely describes the essential elements of knowledge and key skills required to be a software architect," with updated new chapters on enterprise architecture, agile methods, ESBs, and RESTful Web services

Included Index.