Components and connections of a system, grouped by tier or trust boundary.
1 architecture diagram example
Commerce platform architecture
Clients, services and data stores of an online shop, grouped by tier.
Components are grouped by tier, arrows run left to right, and every node's fill says what it is: inputs, services, stores, an external warehouse. Only the API gateway, the integration point, carries the accent.
A software architecture diagram shows the main components of a system, such as clients, services, databases, queues and third-party APIs, and how they connect. The C4 model is a popular way to structure it at context, container and component levels.
Read it by following the connections. Boxes are components, arrows show calls or data flow, and groupings show tiers, networks or trust boundaries.
When to use an architecture diagram
Use it in design reviews to agree on how a new commerce platform or feature will be built.
Use it to onboard engineers and to give security reviewers a map of trust boundaries.
If the question is where things physically run, with hosts, regions and replicas, use a deployment diagram.
How to make a good architecture diagram
Pick one level of detail per diagram and stick to it.
Label every arrow with what flows or the protocol, such as HTTPS, gRPC or events.
Group components by tier or trust boundary and give the groups names.
Add a title and a date, because architecture diagrams go out of date quickly.
