Blog
Mert Özen's blog posts on software development, backend, frontend, and DevOps.
Mermaid and Structurizr DSL: Diagrams Inside Markdown, Model-Based C4 and Which One to Choose
Mermaid is the right tool for quick diagrams that render directly in GitHub and Azure DevOps Markdown, the Structurizr DSL for deriving consistent C4 views from a single model. This post converts the series' diagrams to Mermaid and shows its syntax traps with real output, draws the same container diagram with Structurizr and compares PlantUML, Mermaid and Structurizr.
Diagrams as Code with PlantUML: Syntax, C4-PlantUML, Includes and Rendering in CI
PlantUML describes a diagram in a text file and renders it locally or in CI, so the diagram changes in the same PR as the code, gets diffed and is validated with --check-syntax. This post walks through the PlantUML sources of the series' use case, class, sequence, state and C4 diagrams, sharing a style with !include, rendering in GitHub Actions, and the privacy risks of the public server and the source embedded in SVGs, with real output.
The C4 Model: Context, Container, Component, Code and Notation Rules
The C4 model describes a software system as zooming maps at the Context, Container, Component and Code levels, each for a different reader; the first two levels are enough for most teams, and a C4 container is not a Docker container but a running application or data store. In this post we draw the HR Portal's Context, Container and Component diagrams following the notation checklist, write them as C4-PlantUML and show how to use C4 together with UML.