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A Component is any entity found during inspection of source code.
A component can be any software entity such as a class, a configuration file, a database, a table, a web service, etc.etc. Every component has a name (that uniquely identifies it), a type, an associated programming language, a physical file, as well as associated properties. Also, a component can be “Analyzed”, i.e. found during analysis process because it’s associated to an artifact (typically, a file), or “Inferred” (it was discovered because some other component refers to it but it was not found an artifact for it).
A Relation is any association between two components.
Depending on the nature of the components, the relation can be of different type (calls, contains, includes, inherits, insert, etc.). Also, a relation has a direction.
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As an example, next image show two components (a java class and a database table) where the relation is “select” (the java class is accessing the table through insert statements). You can also see the properties associated to the java class.
Components and Relations are building blocks of Kiuwan Architecture and they will be thoroughly used during this documentation.
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