Mumbai University > Information Technology > Semester 7 > Software Architecture.

A single architectural model can be visualized in many number of ways:

1. Canonical visualizations
2. Textual visualizations
3. Graphical visualizations
4. Hybrid visualizations

1. Canonical Visualizations:

• Architectural modeling notations are simply ways of organizing information. Every notation has at least one visualization that is directly associated with it. This visualization is known as canonical visualizations.
• Example: Powerpoint and OmniGraffle models are manipulated entirely in graphical visualizations.Flowchart diagrams are perfect example of canonical visualizations.
• A common pitfall: Canonical visualizations present the information in a way that is closely related to its organization.

2. Textual visualizations

• Textual visualizations depict architecture using ordinary text files.
• These text files generally conform to a particular syntactic format, much like .c or .java files conforms to the syntax.
• Example: XML visualizations of the architecture is easily read, manipulated, and syntactically validated by XML tools.

3. Graphical visualizations

• Graphical visualizations depict architectures using graphical symbols instead of text.
• Like textual visualizations, graphical visualizations generally conform to a syntax but they may also be free-form.
• Example: Architecture of Client-Server
• Major disadvantages of graphical visualizations is cost of building tools to support them.

4. Hybrid visualizations

• Graphical and textual are rough ways of categorizing visualizations. Many visualizations blur the line between these categories.
• UML can be used to depict hybrid visualizations. Example: UML class diagram is primarily composed of interconnected symbols but constraints on relationships between the symbols are depicted in the OCL (Object Constraint Language) with an exclusively textual visualizations.