What Do You Mean by Mobile App Architecture? The Basis of App Ecosystem
The global epidemic and changing expectations on how and when users interact over mobile have contributed to the growth of mobile apps. The Mobile App Trends 2021 research states that user engagement, as measured by sessions, increased 4.5% while app installs increased by 31% year over year. The Apple App Store has more than 2.22 million apps, while the Google Play Store has 3.48 million.
Sales of 5G devices are fuelling the demand for new apps, and post-pandemic device behavior is still prevalent, including the desire for shopping convenience and delivery services as well as time fillers like games or home fitness apps. Although COVID had an impact on some of this behaviour, the majority of these patterns were already rising. Customers of all types of businesses, both B2B and B2C, are demanding mobile-first engagements, which has prompted many enterprises to think about developing mobile apps.
A group of guidelines, methods, procedures, and patterns are referred to as mobile app architecture while developing a mobile application. These guidelines aid programmers in producing apps that correspond to both corporate needs and professional standards.
The most critical aspect of creating a smartphone app is the mobile architecture. It can influence whether or not the mobile app is successful.
In other words, we can say that the architecture of a mobile app is made up of a number of structural components and associated user interfaces. It has a few methods that aid in creating mobile applications. The app architecture is created by using every mobile-friendly technique. These systems aid in preventing customer issues.
What constitutes a quality mobile app architecture?
Today, many apps are created without using any architecture or standards. An application that lacks architecture is:
- longer and more expensive to create
- difficult to manage, especially if staff changes
- harder to scale or build upon
- challenging to test
- more liable to mistakes
By enforcing good software development practises (KISS, DRY, SOLID) at the right stages of development, a good mobile application architecture will speed up development, provide a clear path for data flow that simplifies work, and support clarity regarding how to scale or expand the app in the future.
A carefully defined mobile app architecture makes testing more effective, supports flexibility and Agile development approaches, and makes future maintenance simpler and less prone to errors.
The three layers in a mobile app architecture are:
1. Presentation layer
All the procedures and elements used to deliver the app to the user are included in the presentation layer. Developers think about what the user will see and experience when they use the app when creating the presentation layer.
2. Logic layer
The logic and rules that govern operations, workflow regulation, and data interchange are the focus of the business layer. This layer is in charge of:
- Cached security data
- Validating Log Data
- Management of exceptions
Depending on how the app is used and the resources needed for each action, the business layer may reside on the server or on the user device.
3. Data layer
All of the data utilities, service agents, and data access elements needed to support data transactions are part of the data layer. This layer consists of two components:
- Data access with data sources via API and persistence
- Network: routing, fault reporting, and network communication
Validation and data upkeep must be taken into consideration while designing the data layer.
Some elements to consider while developing Mobile App Architecture:
1. Device determination
You must take the type of device into account at this point. You would need to research the screen’s dimensions, resolution, CPU specs, memory usage, available storage space, and development tool environment.
It is crucial to know the specifics of the devices on which the app will run because the functionalities of the app will depend on the software or hardware.
2. Bandwidth status
Your application may encounter various situations over its lifecycle where the internet connectivity will either be decreasing or will be completely unavailable. You will need to build your application architecture diagram taking into account the worst network situations. The data access mechanism, caching, and state management must be created with the worst case scenarios in mind.
