Core concepts¶
Everything in ArcaMira is built from a small, consistent vocabulary. Learn these five ideas and the whole product makes sense.
1. Entities¶
An entity is anything in your architecture repository — an application, a capability, a technology component, a data store, an initiative, a principle. Every entity has:
- a name and description
- a layer and an entity type (see below)
- a status (e.g. active, planned, retired)
- a set of properties specific to its type (e.g. an application has lifecycle status, version, support dates)
- a first-class owner (see Ownership)
2. Layers¶
Entities belong to one of five layers. Layers are the broad strata of an architecture:
| Layer | What lives here | Common types |
|---|---|---|
| Business | What the organization does | Capability, Service, Process, Org Unit |
| Application | The systems you run | Application, Portfolio |
| Technology | What systems run on | Technology component |
| Data | Information assets | Data entity, Data store, Data pipeline, Data product |
| Governance | How architecture is steered | Principle, Standard, Decision (ADR), Initiative |
3. Entity types¶
Within a layer, the type determines what the entity is and which fields it carries. Each type has a purpose-built page that leads with what matters for that type — for example, an Application page leads with criticality and lifecycle; a Technology page leads with its blast radius and end-of-life status.
The property schema per type is configurable under Admin → Metamodel, but sensible defaults are pre-loaded.
4. Relationships¶
A relationship connects two entities and has a meaning — for example:
- an Application realises a Capability
- a Service exposes a Capability (its interface to the rest of the organisation)
- a Technology hosts / runs an Application
- an Initiative delivers a Capability
- an Application produces / consumes a Data entity
Relationships are directional and typed. The available types are configurable under Admin → Relationship Types, with defaults pre-loaded. Relationships are what turn a flat inventory into a graph you can traverse — which is what powers impact analysis, redundancy detection, and coverage gaps.
5. Views¶
A view is a curated, named subset of entities and relationships drawn on a diagram canvas — typically one per domain, system, or initiative. Views are scoped to a viewpoint template (which entity/relationship types are relevant and who the audience is).
Views have a status workflow for governance: Draft → Review → Approved → Archived. Node positions are saved, so a view is a durable, shareable artifact. See Creating views & sharing.
Roles¶
ArcaMira has three roles, in increasing privilege:
| Role | Can… |
|---|---|
viewer |
Read-only. Sees clean stakeholder summary pages; never sees editing UI. |
editor |
Everything a viewer can, plus create/edit entities, add relationships, comment, build views. |
admin |
Everything above, plus user management, tenant settings, integrations, and the approval workflow. |
Viewers are automatically redirected to a stakeholder summary when they open any entity — they get the signal without the machinery. Platform administrators (a special super-admin) manage the hosting platform across tenants; that's out of scope for day-to-day use.
Criticality tiers¶
Applications (and other assets) carry a criticality tier — an architect's deliberate judgement, not a crowd-sourced rating:
- T1 · Mission Critical
- T2 · Business Critical
- T3 · Standard
Criticality is set by architects and may be imported from a Business Impact Analysis if you have one. ArcaMira intentionally does not survey owners to rate it (self-rated criticality is always inflated, and the analysis behind it belongs to operational/BCP tooling). See Ownership & accountability.
Ownership¶
Owner is a first-class attribute, and its meaning depends on the layer:
- Applications & Technology carry a product owner — the asset-level accountable person.
- Capabilities carry a business owner — because business ownership belongs to the business function, not the system.
- An application's business owner is derived, not stored — it flows from the capabilities the application realises.
This makes "show me everything owned by X" a real query, which is the basis for ownership reporting. See Ownership & accountability.
Multi-tenancy & deployment (brief)¶
ArcaMira runs as either a multi-tenant SaaS (tenant per subdomain) or a single-tenant self-hosted/demo deployment via Docker. As a user you won't notice the difference; admins should see Admin setup.