Architecture Views Explorer¶

Run the Architecture Views Explorer MicroSim Fullscreen

About This MicroSim¶

Three views (Component & Connector, Deployment, and Security) of the same e-commerce system. It demonstrates why a single diagram cannot capture an architecture: each view answers different stakeholders' concerns and deliberately omits others.

How to Use¶

Click the tabs to switch views. Click any node to see which stakeholders care about it and why. The footer panel shows the viewpoint "recipe": which stakeholders the view serves, what it shows, and what it deliberately omits.

Iframe Embed Code¶

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/atam/sims/architecture-views-explorer/main.html"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan¶

Grade Level¶

Undergraduate / Professional

Duration¶

10-15 minutes

Prerequisites¶

Awareness that an architecture serves multiple stakeholders.

Bloom's Taxonomy Level¶

Understand (L2)

Learning Objective¶

Students can explain why multiple views are necessary by switching between views of the same system and identifying which stakeholder concerns each view addresses and which it omits.

Activities¶

Exploration (5 min): Students freely interact with the MicroSim to discover its behavior.
Guided Practice (5 min): Working from the learning objective above, students answer 2-3 focused questions posed by the instructor.
Discussion (5 min): Students share observations and connect them back to ATAM concepts.

Assessment¶

Ask students which view they would use to answer an operations engineer's question about scaling, and why the security view would not help.

References¶

Bass, L., Clements, P., & Kazman, R. (2021). Software Architecture in Practice (4th ed.). Addison-Wesley.
Kazman, R., Klein, M., & Clements, P. (2000). ATAM: Method for Architecture Evaluation (CMU/SEI-2000-TR-004).