Software architectures have gained widespread popularity since the 1990s. They play a fundamental role in coping with the difficulties inherent in the development of large-scale and complex software systems. Component-oriented and aspect-oriented programming enables software engineers to implement complex applications from a set of pre-defined components. This text contains chapters on software architectures and component technologies from well-known authors, who not only explain the advantages, but also present the shortcomings of the current approaches while introducing solutions to overcome the shortcomings. The book includes a presentation of three practical architecture design methods; four industrial architecture design examples; conceptual models for distributed message-based architectures and techniques for refining architectures into components.