The Essential Project Forum

Hi,
I'm very new to Essential Cloud - in fact, I haven't even got my hands on it yet as we're just going through the procurement process internally.

I've been watching the YouTube videos and going through some of the University stuff and from what I've seen it says that Essential Cloud isn't really the go-to tool for producing architecture diagrams.

What do others do to create architecture diagrams? We can use E.C. for capturing and mapping our architecture, but we still want to be able to produce architecture and solution design diagrams to go into HLD documents, etc.

I think I saw a reference to using Archi for this, but is there a way to get the data/model out of E.C. into Archi to use for diagramming?

Thoughts?

ta

We're actually bringing diagramming into the tool, the BPMN editor was the first iteration. We're taking a cautious approach as we want to maintain the integrity of the data, so people won't be able to just create nonsense, so it does provide guardrails. You will see more diagramming coming over the next 6 months or so.

Otherwise, you can use links to documentation in the summary views to link back to diagrams, the archi loader in Cloud allows you to upload data from archi, it provides predefined mappings, which you can amend if required. However, the diagrams remain within archi

I use the C4 methodology for Arch diagrams using their Diagrams As Code Structurizr language.

I've also been very successful in pulling in the C4 diagrams in to Essential via the Api in certain areas

C4 softwareSystems become application providers.
Relationships become dependancies in a static application provider architecture.

Then using the container diagrams we have defined a set of structuring tags that are to be used that we pull out to build a deployment and a technology product build to link technologies to applications.

Future work on this is looking in to how we can use the container diagrams to build out a logical software architecture where each container becomes a software component in Essential etc.

Declan Lynch wrote: 26 Jul 2024, 14:15 I use the C4 methodology for Arch diagrams using their Diagrams As Code Structurizr language.

I've also been very successful in pulling in the C4 diagrams in to Essential via the Api in certain areas

C4 softwareSystems become application providers.
Relationships become dependancies in a static application provider architecture.

Then using the container diagrams we have defined a set of structuring tags that are to be used that we pull out to build a deployment and a technology product build to link technologies to applications.

Future work on this is looking in to how we can use the container diagrams to build out a logical software architecture where each container becomes a software component in Essential etc.

Hello Declan, have you made any progress on that mapping between C4 and the Essential classes? I’m currently developing an interface project for Essential (https://github.com/terryvel/essential-o ... age-editor), and the next step I want to focus on is the application registration. I’d like to start designing the application architecture following the C4 model.

Hi Terry, Declan,
very intersting discussion. I had in mind to modify the one page editor from Terry to be able to add an application with modules, APIs and dependencies (to other applications) as well as to human actors. If successful, it should be possible to export a dup file to add an application with dependencies to Essential and create an C4 export-file in DSL language for Structurizr from Sam Brown.
Potentially, DSL files can be imported to essential, if the classes from structurizr can be mapped to elements from essential.
Potentially, we can join forces.
Holger

Hi Holger, Count me in, challenge accepted!

Where can we start?

Hi Holger/Terry,

We're happy to help, particularly with the meta-model mapping.

Just let me know

John