The Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd edition, is now available on Amazon and should be available on the shelf at your local bookstores soon.  The PDF was downloaded ~180,000 times.  This is the Microsoft platform playbook for application architecture.  You can think of it as a set of blueprints, and as your personal mentor for building common types of applications on the Microsoft platform:  mobile, RIA, services, and Web applications.

The backbone of the guide is an information model for the application architecture space.  It’s a durable and evolvable map to give you a firm foundation of principles, patterns, and practices that you can overlay the latest technologies.  It’s your “tome of know-how.”  While it’s not a step-by-step for building specific applications, it is a pragmatic guide for designing your architecture, with quality attributes, key software principles, common patterns, and architectural styles in mind.  It’s holistic and focused on the key engineering decisions where you face your highest risks and most important choices.

Key Features of the Book
The book has several compelling features for slicing and dicing the application architecture body of knowledge:    

• Canonical Frame.  This describes at a meta-level, the tiers and layers that an architect should consider. Each tier/layer will be described in terms of its focus, function, capabilities, common design patterns and technologies.
• Application Types.  These are canonical application archetypes to illustrate common application types: Mobile, Rich Client, RIA, Services, and Web applications.  Each archetype is described in terms of the target scenarios, technologies, patterns and infrastructure it contains. Each archetype is mapped to the canonical app frame. They are illustrative of common application types and not comprehensive or definitive.
• Quality attributes.  This is a set of qualities and capabilities that shape your application architecture: performance, security, scalability, manageability, deployment, communication, etc.
• Cross-cutting concerns.  This is a common set of categories for hot spots for key engineering decisions: Authentication, Authorization, Caching, Communication, Configuration Management, Exception Management, Logging and Instrumentation, State Management, and Validation.
• Step-by-Step Design Approach.
• Principles, patterns, and practices.   Using the application types, canonical frame, and cross-cutting concerns as backdrops, the guide provides an overlay of relevant principles, patterns, and practices.
• Technologies and capabilities.  The guide provides an overview and description of the Microsoft custom application development platform and the main technologies and capabilities within it.

Contents at a Glance
The full Microsoft Application Architecture Guide is available for free on MSDN in HTML.  This is the contents of the guide at a glance:

• Foreword by S. Somasegar
• Foreword by Scott Guthrie
• Preface by David Hill

Chapters

• Chapter 1: What is Software Architecture?
• Chapter 2: Key Principles of Software Architecture
• Chapter 3: Architectural Patterns and Styles
• Chapter 4: A Technique for Architecture and Design
• Chapter 5: Layered Application Guidelines
• Chapter 6: Presentation Layer Guidelines
• Chapter 7: Business Layer Guidelines
• Chapter 8: Data Layer Guidelines
• Chapter 9: Service Layer Guidelines
• Chapter 10: Component Guidelines
• Chapter 11: Designing Presentation Components
• Chapter 12: Designing Business Components
• Chapter 13: Designing Business Entities
• Chapter 14: Designing Workflow Components
• Chapter 15: Designing Data Components
• Chapter 16: Quality Attributes
• Chapter 17: Crosscutting Concerns
• Chapter 18: Communication and Messaging
• Chapter 19: Physical Tiers and Deployment
• Chapter 20: Choosing an Application Type
• Chapter 21: Designing Web Applications
• Chapter 22: Designing Rich Client Applications
• Chapter 23: Designing Rich Internet Applications
• Chapter 24: Designing Mobile Applications
• Chapter 25: Designing Service Applications
• Chapter 26: Designing Hosted and Cloud Services
• Chapter 27: Designing Office Business Applications
• Chapter 28: Designing SharePoint LOB Applications

Appendices

• Appendix A: The Microsoft Application Platform
• Appendix B: Presentation Technology Matrix
• Appendix C: Data Access Technology Matrix
• Appendix D: Integration Technology Matrix
• Appendix E: Workflow Technology Matrix
• Appendix F: patterns & practices Enterprise Library
• Appendix G: patterns & practices Pattern Catalog

The Team
Here is the team that brought you the guide:

• Core Dev Team: J.D. Meier, Alex Homer, David Hill, Jason Taylor, Prashant Bansode, Lonnie Wall, Rob Boucher Jr, Akshay Bogawat
• Test Team - Rohit Sharma, Praveen Rangarajan, Kashinath TR, Vijaya Jankiraman
• Edit Team - Dennis Rea
• External Contributors/Reviewers - Adwait Ullal; Andy Eunson; Brian Sletten; Christian Weyer; David Guimbellot; David Ing; David Weller; Derek Greer; Eduardo Jezierski; Evan Hoff; Gajapathi Kannan; Jeremy D. Miller; John Kordyback; Keith Pleas; Kent Corley; Mark Baker; Paul Ballard; Peter Oehlert; Norman Headlam; Ryan Plant; Sam Gentile; Sidney G Pinney; Ted Neward; Udi Dahan
• Microsoft Contributors / Reviewers - Ade Miller; Amit Chopra; Anna Liu; Anoop Gupta; Bob Brumfield; Brad Abrams; Brian Cawelti; Bhushan Nene; Burley Kawasaki; Carl Perry; Chris Keyser; Chris Tavares; Clint Edmonson; Dan Reagan; David Hill; Denny Dayton; Diego Dagum; Dmitri Martynov; Dmitri Ossipov; Don Smith; Dragos Manolescu; Elisa Flasko; Eric Fleck; Erwin van der Valk; Faisal Mohamood; Francis Cheung; Gary Lewis; Glenn Block; Gregory Leake; Ian Ellison-Taylor; Ilia Fortunov; J.R. Arredondo; John deVadoss; Joseph Hofstader; Koby Avital; Loke Uei Tan; Luke Nyswonger; Manish Prabhu; Meghan Perez; Mehran Nikoo; Michael Puleio; Mike Francis; Mike Walker; Mubarak Elamin; Nick Malik; Nobuyuki Akama; Ofer Ashkenazi; Pablo Castro; Pat Helland; Phil Haack; Rabi Satter; Reed Robison; Rob Tiffany; Ryno Rijnsburger; Scott Hanselman; Seema Ramchandani; Serena Yeoh; Simon Calvert; Srinath Vasireddy; Tom Hollander; Wojtek Kozaczynski

Application Architecture Knowledge Base
The guide was developed in conjunction with our Application Architecture Guide v2.0 Knowledge Base Project. The knowledge base project was used to inform and steer the guide during its development. The Application Architecture Knowledge Base includes a large amount of material that expands on specific topics in the main guide. It also includes draft material from the main guide that is targeted and packaged for more specific audiences, such as the Pocket Guide series.

• Overview Slides
• Train the Trainer (Video)
• Pocket Guides
• Videos
• Slides
• Figures (Visios)

Key Links at a Glance
Here are the key links at a glance:

• Microsoft Application Architecture Guide (MSDN)
• Microsoft Application Architecture Guide (Amazon)
• Application Architecture Knowledge Base