C4InterFlow = C4 Model + Interfaces + Flows

Vision 💡

Transform the landscape of Application Architecture by bridging the gap between Architecture Model and Code.

Mission 🎯

Provide a comprehensive Application Architecture framework for IT Professionals to

1. Effortlessly express Application Architecture as Code (AaC)
2. Use AaC to build Business Processes as Code (BPaC)
3. Automatically generate Application and Business Architecture diagrams and other documentation from AaC and BPaC
4. Intuitively analyse Application Architecture by issuing simple queries against AaC

Overview

C4InterFlow is a comprehensive Application Architecture focused framework designed for anyone in an organisation, who wants to either contribute to (or just to explore) the Application Architecture documentation.

Problem statements ❗

Documenting Application Architecture with diagram drawing tools like Visio, Miro, LucidCharts etc., while popular and often effective, poses several key (genetically unsolved) problems that stem from the inherent limitations of these tools and the complex nature of software architecture. Here are some of these problems

• Complexity Management: Modern Application Architecture can become very complex, with many layers, services, components and technologies. Diagrams can get too crowded and hard to understand, making it hard to clearly express the Architecture.

• Dynamic and Evolving Architectures: Architecture structures change over time. Manually updating diagrams is slow and error-prone, causing documentation to become inaccurate and outdated.

• Architecture Model - Code gap: There is a mismatch between diagramming and coding tools. Changes in code don't automatically update diagrams, causing inconsistencies between Architecture representation and the actual code.

• Standardisation and Consistency: Different diagramming tools and different diagram authors use different symbols and styles, leading to inconsistent documentation. This can confuse and slow down communication among team members.

• Duplication: Different teams drawing Architecture diagrams at different times will inevitably create different views of the same Architecture structures and their relationships using slightly different terminology. This leads to duplications and confusions.

• Collaboration and Version Control: Many diagramming tools have limited features for teamwork and tracking changes over time, making it hard to handle updates, especially with large or remote teams.

• Interoperability and Exporting: Sharing diagrams between different tools or platforms can lose details, as there's no common standard for diagram formats. This makes it harder to share and collaborate on architectural designs.

• Architecture Analysis: Diagramming tools often provide static representations that lack interactive capabilities for in-depth analysis. This limitation makes it difficult to understand how changes in one component might affect others, leading to inefficient planning and potential oversights in managing complex systems.

• Business Process Modelling: Diagrmaming tools require users to create new static diagrams each time they want to model new interactions between different structures, their behaviours, and actors, such as business processes. This method leads to significant duplication of structures and behaviours across diagrams, making it cumbersome to update, maintain, and understand the holistic view of the system.

Solutions 💡

The table below maps Problems to Possible Solutions and C4InterFlow Capabilities.

❗ Problem	💡 Proposed solution	🌟 C4Interflow Capability
Complexity Management	Modular Architecture Definitions: define architecture in code, so that it can be modularised into smaller, manageable components, making complex systems easier to understand and manage.	Definition of Architecture as Code in C#, YAML or JSON at any level of modularity e.g. Software System, Container, Component, Interface etc.
Complexity Management	Adaptive Visualization: allow the user to adjust the number of structures and their relationships (boxes and lines) they see, and at what level of detail, when they visualise Application Architecture. Manage complexity by displaying only relevant information based on the user's context, focus, or specific task at hand.	Generation of Architecture diagrams of different Types (e.g. C4, C4 Static and Sequence), of different Scopes (e.g. all Software Systems, Software System, Container, Interface(s), Business Process etc.) and at different Levels of Details (e.g. Context, Container and Component)
Dynamic and Evolving Architectures	Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) for Architecture: implement of CI/CD pipelines for architecture code, managing evolving architecture through automated integration, and deployment processes.	Using Command Line Interface (CLI) in CI/CD pipelines for automating AaC generation, AaC querying and diagrams and other documentation generation
Architecture Model - Code gap	Code-driven Architecture and Diagrams generation: generate architecture diagrams directly from metadata in the codebase, using code analysis and other techniques.	Automatic generation of Architecture as Code in C#, YAML or JSON from .NET (C#) source code. Extensible C4InterFlow architecture allows generation of Architecture as Code from codebases in other languages as well as from Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Standardization and Consistency	Architecture Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs): create standardized DSLs for defining architectures, ensuring consistency in how architectures are described and understood across tools and teams.	Use C4InterFlow Architecture as Code DSL, inspired by C4 Model and ArchiMate, to express architecture Structures and Behaviours in C#, YAML or JSON
Standardization and Consistency	Adopt Standards for Diagramming: work towards a widely adopted standard(s) for software architecture diagramming that includes symbols, notation, and abstraction levels, similar to UML.	Automatic generation of C4 Model and UML Sequence diagrams using a single Visualisation Engine that guaranties consistency in visual architecture representations
Duplication	Architecture Model driven visualisation: allows for generation of architecture diagrams for different view points from a single Architecture Model	Create multiple architecture views by querying Architecture as Code to find relevant Structures and Behaviours (Interfaces) and generating diagrams using query results
Collaboration and Version Control	Architecture Catalog: use it as a collaborative platform where teams can contribute, share, and discuss architectural structures and their relationships.	Excel Architecture Catalogue template with validation and CSV export Macro. Automatic generation of Architecture as Code in C#, YAML or JSON form CSV Architecture Catalogue
Collaboration and Version Control	Version-Controlled Architecture Repositories: store architecture code in version-controlled repositories, enabling collaborative editing, branching, and merging, similar to how source code is managed.	Storing Architecture as Code in C#, YAML or JSON in version-controlled repositories e.g. Git
Interoperability and Exporting	Exportable and Importable Code and Diagram Formats: Ensure architecture code and diagrams are written/published in formats that are easily exportable and importable across different tools and platforms, facilitating interoperability.	Architecture as Code can be written/generated in C#, YAML or JSON . Diagrams can be generated in a variety of formats including Plant UML (.puml), SVG, PNG and Markdown (.md files with embedded PNG diagrams). With a bit of additional custom automation, these diagrams can be published to other platforms e.g. GitHub Pages, Confluence etc.
Architecture Analysis	Query Language for Architecture: Develop (or adopt existing) query language specifically for Architecture as Code or Architecture Catalogue. Users could use this language to ask complex questions about dependencies, impact of changes, and architecture dynamics, with the tools parsing the architecture to provide results.	Advanced querying of Architecture as Code, with support for JSON Path-like syntax, to uncover dependencies or to perform any other AaC analysis. Custom diagram generation based on query results
Business Process Modelling	Business Process Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs): Develop a Business Process modelling language that allows for dynamic linking between different architectural structures and their behaviour. This would enable users to define a single instance of a structure or behaviours that can be referenced across multiple Business Processes, ensuring consistency and reducing duplication.	Describe Business Process as Code in C#, YAML or JSON through Activities and Flows utilising existing Interfaces. Add and Edit Business Processes via the Excel Architecture Catalogue. C4InterFlow can automatically generate Business Process as Code in C#, YAML or JSON from Excel/CSV Architecture Catalogue

Capabilities map

Toolchain Tracks

• Track 1

  • User populates Architecture/Business Processes Catalogue
    • Excel is currently the only supported format
  • User executes Excel Macro to Write (export) Architecture/Business Processes Catalogue into CSV files
  • CLI execute-aac-strategy Command is executed via CI/CD or in any other manner
    • This generates Architecture as Code (AaC) and Business Processes as Code (BPaC) from Architecture/Business Processes Catalogue in CSV format

• Track 2

  • User writes Source Code for Software System(s)
  • CLI execute-aac-strategy Command is executed via CI/CD or in any other manner
    • This generates Architecture as Code (AaC) from the Source Code
      • C# Source Code is supported out-of-the-box
      • Extensible C4InterFlow architecture allows generation of Architecture as Code from codebases in other languages as well as from Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Track 3

  • User writes Architecture as Code (AaC) and Business Processes as Code (BPaC) either in C#, YAML or JSON

• Common steps for Tracks 1, 2 and 3

  • CLI draw-diagrams Command is executed via CI/CD or in any other manner
    • This generates Diagrams as Code in PlantUML (.puml) format
    • This can also generate SVG, PNG and Markdown (.md) formats for the same diagrams

Example use cases

Software Engineers and Architects contribute by populating an Architecture Catalogue and by generating (or writing manually) Architecture as Code (AaC).

Product Owners, QA and any other team members, on the other hand, explore the Application Architecture by browsing various automatically generated diagrams (e.g. C4, Sequence etc.) as well as by querying Application Architecture (e.g. to find dependencies).

Architects and Product Owners contribute by adding Business Processes to the Architecture Catalogue or by writing Business Processes as Code manually.

Operations team members explore the Business Processes by browsing various automatically generated diagrams

Getting Started

• Choose an approach for expressing Architecture as Code (AaC) i.e. C#, YAML or JSON
• Choose the C4InterFlow toolchain Track you'd like use to eventually arrive to the Application Architecture Diagrams
• Check out the Samples
• Explore the CLI capabilities available out-of-the-box with C4InterFlow
• Learn more on the wiki
• Have a question or any other enquiries, let's talk.
• Want to work together on your implementation of Architecture as Code, let's talk.
• Want to discuss the best place to start, Book a FREE 30 minutes consultation

Feedback

If you've tried using C4InterFlow, we would love to hear from you.
What were your expectations? What were you trying to achieve? Did it work for you? What was missing?
Leave us your feedback. We'll learn from it and try our best to make C4InterFlow better for you.

System Requirements

• C4InterFlow uses PlantUML .jar (embedded within the project), which requires Java to be installed on your machine
  • Check if Java is already installed: java -version. The minimum version needed is Java 8.

Known issues

• Git "Filename too long" message on Windows
  • Use git config --global core.longpaths true to allow long paths
  • See Paths too long on Windows issue

Support

• For help or to report issues, please raise GitHub issues.

Contributions

• Adhere to .NET coding standards.
• Work on approved issues only.
• Submit contributions via Pull Requests for review.

Acknowledgements

• Inspired by the C4 Model, C4-PlantUML project, and c4sharp project.

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NOTE: This document is subject to change. Users are encouraged to check back regularly for updates.