container View

The container view zooms into an individual enterprise system to reveal its internal software decomposition into applications, microservices, internal components, and autonomous AI agents.

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Visual Projection

Container View showing microservices, components, and AI agents inside a system boundary

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Purpose & Target Audience

• Target Audience: Solution Architects, Tech Leads, Software Engineers, DevOps Engineers.
• Primary Use Cases:
  • Zooming into a single system boundary to understand internal modularity.
  • Modeling frontend web/mobile clients, REST APIs, and backend workers.
  • Documenting how autonomous agent entities interact with internal services.
  • Designing service-to-service communication paths and database access.

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Supported Entity Types

Entity Type	Container Role	Description
system	Boundary Frame	The parent container enclosing all internal software assets.
app	Service / Application	Microservice, web API, frontend SPA, or worker daemon.
component	Granular Module	In-process handler, library, filter, or protocol controller.
agent	AI Agent / Copilot	Autonomous cognitive agent, LLM supervisor, or automated worker.
data_object	Domain Data	Schema entities and transactional data tables accessed by apps.
infrastructure	Persistence Target	Embedded databases or private queues backing the system.

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Supported Relationships & Verbs

Relationship Verb	Source Entity	Target Entity	Typical Representation
composed_of	system, app	app, component, agent	Boundary nesting & composition
depends_on	app, component, agent	app, component, agent	Internal service dependency edge
reads, writes	app, component, agent	data_object	Data access & persistence edge
protects	agent, control, component	app, component, data_object	Security, authentication & telemetry monitoring edge
flows_to	app, component	app, component	Synchronous / asynchronous data flow

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Filtering & Layout Recommendations

• Recommended Layout: auto_layout LeftToRight (ingress to egress pipeline) or auto_layout TopToBottom.
• Common Predicates:
  • include sys_payment_gateway: Target an explicit system by ID.
  • include app where api_type == "REST": Highlight exposed REST services.
  • exclude where status == "Deprecated": Remove deprecated modules.

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Complete DSL Example

views {
    container v_payment_hub_internals "Payment Hub Internal Architecture" {
        # Target the core system and its internal modules
        include sys_payment_hub
        include app
        include component
        include agent
        include data_object

        # Include internal interactions
        include_verb depends_on
        include_verb reads
        include_verb writes
        include_verb protects

        # Horizontal flow layout
        auto_layout LeftToRight

        # Style AI agents prominently
        style agent where autonomy_level == "High" {
            css_class "agent-highlight"
            icon "bot"
        }
    }
}