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Architecture Diagram
CREATED BY ANONYMOUS, CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSEDragon1 Definition for
Architecture Diagram:
An architecture diagram is a graphical representation of a set of concepts, that are part of an architecture, including their principles, elements, and components.
What is a diagram? What type is an architecture diagram? The Dragon1 open EA Method makes it very clear: if a diagram does not show a concept, principle, or part of a principle, it is NOT an architecture diagram because it does not show (a part of) the architecture.
An Example Architectural Diagram of an Enterprise Architecture to create a Modern Smart and Green Company, using various concepts and principles.
Types of Architecture Diagrams
There are many kinds of architectural diagrams, like software architecture diagrams, system architecture diagrams, application architecture diagrams, security architecture diagrams, etc.
Levels of Abstractions
Architecture is a coherent set of concepts for a structure. These concepts are often visualized at four levels of abstraction. These are:
- Conceptual Level - showing an overview of concepts.
- Logical Level - showing a logical design of one or more concepts, containing at least the key elements of concepts and showing the principles of the concepts (i.e., how the concepts work).
- Physical Level - showing a component design depicting the elements.
- Implementational Level - showing the vendors and products with which the components will be implemented.
All the visualizations on this page are logical level architecture diagrams. An architecture diagram showing often a combination of logical and physical aspects, meaning that logical elements and physical components are used in the visualization.
The open EA method suggests separating these abstraction levels in various diagrams or being very clear about which shapes show an element and which show a component.
Visualizing a Principle: Separation of Concerns
Using a Logical Level Architectural Diagram of an Application Landscape.
The above diagram is, in this case, a logical architecture diagram showing the office concept used in the organization:
- Front Office
- Mid Office
- Back Office
The principle of the Office concept is: By separating concerns with regard to software applications in the front, mid, and back office, the applications for these three domains can be integrated and focused much better on their task.
Front office applications deal with client data and must be updated more frequently than back office applications. So placing all these applications together makes it easier to integrate and deduplicate them.
This is also true with mid and back office. Back office applications are often transaction processing applications that are hardly updated every month with new functionality. Also, the application platforms and the sizing of their infrastructure are significantly different from the applications of the front office.
Grouping applications logically and or physically in front, mid, and back office will cause you as an organization to make better use of the applications.
These specific diagrams help CxOs, managers, and architects make decisions like deduplicating application modules and replacing, merging, integrating, and phasing out applications. The result of this work is that the organization's application landscape will comply better with the enterprise strategy, and the return on IT investments (how well you use the IT equipment you have bought) will be higher.
So every organization benefits from creating these kinds of architectural diagrams and maintaining them on Dragon1.
Chatbot Architecture Diagram Example
The next visualization is an architecture diagram showing some elements of the Chatbot concept, and the coherence between these elements is made very clear.
Example Logical Level Architectural Diagram of a Chatbot.
This diagram does not show all elements of the Chatbot concept, but it focuses on the key elements described by the principle of the concept.
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