Visualizing an Architecture Aspect as a UML Component Diagram

Sonargraph’s domain specific language (DSL) to describe architecture aspects is very powerful. An architecture aspect consists at least of 1 top-level architecture file that has been added to the architecture configuration and is checked automatically. Such a top-level architecture file can include other architecture files reusing common definitions. With our latest release (11.4.0) we complemented the strictly text based representation of architecture aspects with a UML component generator.

A generated UML component diagram complements in several ways our text based architecture aspects:

  • It is a commonly accepted form of communicating architecture definitions
  • It shows the resulting architecture aspect event if it is spread over several files in 1 diagram
  • It can be used to cross-check the underlying text based architecture aspect (i.e. are the resulting restrictions the intended ones?)

Let’s have a look at a concrete example. Suppose we want an architecture aspect containing 2 (vertical) slices (domain driven divisions) Customer and Common and 3 layers (technical divisions) View, Model and Persistence. Furthermore we want a separate License component usable only from the Common slice and a JDBC component usable only from the Persistence layers. One way to express this with our architecture DSL would be the following:

Our top-level architecture file would be Slices.arc, using Layers.arc and Jdbc.arc. Make sure to add the top-level architecture file to the architecture check via the context menu entry ‘Add To Architecture Check’ on the corresponding file. As you can see above the Slices.arc is checked. Note that in the example above we have omitted all include patterns that would be needed to match the code for the sake of simplicity.

Once we have a checked architecture file we can simply generate an UML component diagram via the context menu entry ‘Show in Architecture Diagram View’ on the corresponding file.

In our example that results in the following UML component diagram:

The generated UML component diagram is “interactive” in the sense that you can select different elements (e.g. components, connectors, interfaces). The selected element is highlighted in yellow along with it’s connected elements (e.g. a connector that is included in a higher level connector), reachable (i.e. allowed) elements are
highlighted in green. Components also might have child components, such components can be
expanded and collapsed (e.g. Customer and Common).

Connectors and interfaces that show a small solid black rectangle on their anchor point are
directly defined by their component. The ones without that decorator are coming from child
components.

The different elements also offer a tool tip showing interesting information about
incoming/outgoing connections and other aspects. Clicking into the tool tip window will leave it
open (until pressing ESC). The content of the tool tip may be selected and copied.

The currently visible UML diagram may be exported as an image using the context menu.

The components are layout in a levelized grid. Components with no incoming connections are
on top, components with no outgoing connections are on the bottom. The further down a
component is, the more other components depend on it. Components on the same level have
more incoming dependencies from left to right. Components with the same number of incoming
dependencies have more outgoing dependencies from left to right.

As long as the view stays open it is also updated when saving changes to the underlying
architecture file(s).

Lets cross-check the usage of our JDBC component by selecting it:

As we can see JDBC may only be used from the Persistence layers. Additionally we can use the information by the tool tip on the component. Let’s check our License component:

Great, our License component may only be used from the Common slice. Additionally we can use also the information provided by the tool tip on the interface.

Hopefully you can see how helpful it can be to use the complementary UML component diagram generation when working on architecture aspects. Please feel free to add a comment below.

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