If you're using a language like Java or C , the simplest way to think of a component is that it's a collection of implementation classes behind an interface. Aspects such as how those components are packaged e. An important point to note here is that all components inside a container typically execute in the same process space.
In the C4 model, components are not separately deployable units. Visualising this hierarchy of abstractions is then done by creating a collection of Context , Container , Component and optionally Code e. UML class diagrams. This is where the C4 model gets its name from. See example diagram, key, and narrative. A System Context diagram is a good starting point for diagramming and documenting a software system, allowing you to step back and see the big picture.
Draw a diagram showing your system as a box in the centre, surrounded by its users and the other systems that it interacts with. Detail isn't important here as this is your zoomed out view showing a big picture of the system landscape.
The focus should be on people actors, roles, personas, etc and software systems rather than technologies, protocols and other low-level details. It's the sort of diagram that you could show to non-technical people. Primary elements : The software system in scope. Supporting elements : People e. Intended audience : Everybody, both technical and non-technical people, inside and outside of the software development team.
Once you understand how your system fits in to the overall IT environment, a really useful next step is to zoom-in to the system boundary with a Container diagram. A "container" is something like a server-side web application, single-page application, desktop application, mobile app, database schema, file system, etc. The Container diagram shows the high-level shape of the software architecture and how responsibilities are distributed across it. It also shows the major technology choices and how the containers communicate with one another.
Primary elements : Containers within the software system in scope. Supporting elements : People and software systems directly connected to the containers. Notes : This diagram says nothing about deployment scenarios, clustering, replication, failover, etc. Next you can zoom in and decompose each container further to identify the major structural building blocks and their interactions.
Primary elements : Components within the container in scope. Supporting elements : Containers within the software system in scope plus people and software systems directly connected to the components. Intended audience : Software architects and developers. Recommended for most teams : No, only create component diagrams if you feel they add value, and consider automating their creation for long-lived documentation.
See example diagram and narrative. Finally, you can zoom in to each component to show how it is implemented as code; using UML class diagrams, entity relationship diagrams or similar.
This is an optional level of detail and is often available on-demand from tooling such as IDEs. Ideally this diagram would be automatically generated using tooling e. This level of detail is not recommended for anything but the most important or complex components.
Primary elements : Code elements e. Recommended for most teams : No, for long-lived documentation, most IDEs can generate this level of detail on demand. Once you have a good understanding of the static structure, you can supplement the C4 diagrams to show other aspects. The C4 model provides a static view of a single software system but, in the real-world, software systems never live in isolation.
For this reason, and particularly if you are responsible for a collection of software systems, it's often useful to understand how all of these software systems fit together within the bounds of an enterprise.
To do this, simply add another diagram that sits "on top" of the C4 diagrams, to show the system landscape from an IT perspective. Essentially this is a high-level map of the software systems at the enterprise level, with a C4 drill-down for each software system of interest.
From a practical perspective, a system landscape diagram is really just a system context diagram without a specific focus on a particular software system. Primary elements : People and software systems related to the enterprise in scope.
Intended audience : Technical and non-technical people, inside and outside of the software development team. A dynamic diagram can be useful when you want to show how elements in a static model collaborate at runtime to implement a user story, use case, feature, etc.
It is similar to a UML sequence diagram although it allows a free-form arrangement of diagram elements with numbered interactions to indicate ordering. Scope : An enterprise, software system or container. Primary and supporting elements : Depends on the diagram scope; enterprise see System Landscape diagram , software system see System Context or Container diagrams , container see Component diagram.
This deployment diagram is based upon a UML deployment diagram , although simplified slightly to show the mapping between containers and deployment nodes. A deployment node is something like physical infrastructure e. IaaS, PaaS, a virtual machine , containerised infrastructure e. Deployment nodes can be nested. You may also want to include infrastructure nodes such as DNS services, load balancers, firewalls, etc. Primary elements : Deployment nodes, software system instances, and container instances.
Supporting elements : Infrastructure nodes used in the deployment of the software system. The C4 model doesn't prescribe any particular notation. A simple notation that works well on whiteboards, paper, sticky notes, index cards and a variety of diagraming tools is as follows.
You can then use colour and shapes to supplement the diagram, either to add additional information or simply to make the diagram more aesthetically pleasing. Although the example diagrams above are created using a "boxes and lines" notation, the core diagrams can be illustrated using UML with the appropriate use of packages, components and stereotypes.
The resulting UML diagrams do tend to lack the same degree of descriptive text though, because adding such text isn't possible or easy with some UML tools. Here are three examples of a System Context, Container and Component diagram for comparison. Although the C4 model is an abstraction-first approach and notation independent, you still need to ensure that your diagram notation makes sense, and that the diagrams are comprehensible. A good way to think about this is to ask yourself whether each diagram can stand alone, and be mostly understood without a narrative.
You can use this short software architecture diagram review checklist to help. Part of Simon's training course was a design exercise, where groups of people were given some requirements, asked to do some design, and to draw some diagrams to express that design.
Although this was a design focussed exercise, the wide variety of diagrams made it evident that the visualisation of ideas was a skill that most people sorely lacked. The C4 model is essentially a formalisation of how Simon used to visualise software architecture, which has evolved over the years. The roots of the C4 model, and the various diagram types within it, can be traced back to somewhere in the region of , although the "C4" name came much later, around the end of It was created during a time where teams, influenced by the agile movement, were less than enthusiastic about using UML.
Whether you see the C4 model as a step forwards or a step backwards depends upon where you are. Unfortunately, UML usage seems to be in decline, and many teams have reverted to using ad hoc boxes and lines diagrams once again.
Given that many of those teams don't want to use UML for various reasons , the C4 model helps introduce some structure and discipline into the way software architecture is communicated. For many teams, the C4 model is sufficient. And for others, perhaps it's a stepping stone to UML. The honest answer is that nobody knows.
Simon has personally taught the C4 model to somewhere over 10, people in more than 30 countries; with conference talks, videos, books and articles reaching many more than this. Other people are also teaching, speaking and writing about the C4 model too.
It's definitely being used though, in organisations ranging from startups to global household names. Terms like "process", "application", "app", "server", "deployable unit", etc all have associated implications, so the name "container" was chosen as a generic way to describe something in which components live. From one perspective, it's unfortunate that containerisation has become popular, because many software developers now associate the term "container" with Docker.
From another perspective though, there is sometimes a nice parity between a container in the C4 model and an infrastructure e. Docker container. While many teams successfully use the C4 model as is, feel free to change the terminology if needed. This terminology context, containers, components and code works for many organisations and many types of software. However, sometimes an organisation will have an existing terminology that people are already familiar with. Once you've finished your work, try to share it right away!
All you need is an HTML link. Below are four widely-used architecture diagram templates, click one of them to start designing yours! Enjoy creating Architecture Diagrams online with this easy-to-use tool.
You'll be surprised by its abundant symbols and templates, amazed by how easy it works, and satisfied with the service and price. Try it today! Create Architecture Diagram Online Effortlessly create software architectures, application architectures and system architectures in minutes. Therefore I use draw. The latter is a good choice because you can choose either to draw the diagram manually or use the UML Sequence diagramming. This is possible as Sequence Diagram is a structured one.
Using context, containers and sequence diagrams you can answer what parts of the system consist of and how they relate and interact with each others. But they hardly can answer the questions of availability, scalability and security. Deployment diagram helps with that. Compute resources. This can include virtual machines, docker containers, kubernetes clusters and cloud functions. You can also think of mobile devices and desktop computers as compute resources as well. Persistent storages for your data like relational and nosql databases, binary file storages like images, music and video, bigdata storages with parket files and so on.
Messaging resources. Your computers use networks to communicate with each others. Both physical and virtual networks should be displayed.
The diagram shows the compute, storage and messaging resources alongside with networks and availability zones. It also includes the instrastructure nodes which are not fulfilling any functional requirements, but addressing non-functional instead. There are plenty of tools to create a deployment diagram. OmniGraffle, LucidChart, Draw. Deployment diagram complements the understanding of the system from the physical appearence perspective.
The most of previous diagrams were very technical ones. Use Case diagram is more business oriented. It depicts how the persons are interacting with your system in a very high level way.
Use cases themselves can be treated as business capabilities, which I were describing in this article. The architect can draw a diagram with any graphical editor and with the same toolset used for other diagrams.
Omnigraffle, LucidChart, Draw. PlantUml or LucidChart helps with that. Discuss this article on twitter. If you like the article, make sure to Subscribe for the upcoming articles!
Context The c4 website does a pretty good job explaining their diagrams, but I still would like to provide my own understanding. Example Context diagram This diagram displays the neo-banking digital platform presented by a blue rectangle in the center.
How to draw Identify the persons who will use your system Identify the external systems Create a single rectangle depicting your system Add connections between the system, users and external systems Provide meaningful comments on every component Tools There are different tools you can use to create the context diagram. Let's say we want to draw the aforementioned diagram for a neo-banking digital platform with uml: startuml!
Important highlights Context diagram is the first thing you create when working on a system. Failing to do so may cost you missed integrations and mistakes during system design. Context may actually include some lower level details, this is perfectly fine. I was struggling with a context diagram for one banking system. It would include only a newly created system and a single customer, which didn't bring any value. Visual Paradigm Online provides you with a free online ArchiMate diagram tool that supports the notation and syntax of the ArchiMate 3 visual.
Edraw Max is an incredibly versatile architecture diagram tool offering various solutions for systems developers to satisfy their requirements. Online software architecture diagram tool. There are 14 types of UML diagrams to standardize software solutions modify software design and visualize software systems. What is the correct name for such diagrams. What is a good tool to create them. Filter by popular features pricing options number of users and read reviews from real users and find a tool that fits your needs.
Design Architecture Diagram with Edraw Max. Join 10M users from around the world now. The free UML tool comes with no ad no limited period of access and no limitations such as number of diagrams.
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