“Which diagramming tool should we use?” - I hear this question on a regular basis, with teams debating the pros and cons of tools such as PlantUML vs Mermaid, for example. By Simon Brown.
Rather than argue over which diagramming tool you’re going to use, why not use them all? Although we only saw PlantUML support in the previous blog post, the open source Structurizr CLI actually allows you to use a number of tools to render your software architecture diagrams. For example, you can create the same view (C4 model Container diagram), each created from the same DSL file, and rendered in different diagramming tools.
The article the compares following tools:
- PlantUML
- Mermaid
- Structurizr (traditional diagram)
- Structurizr (graph view)
The Structurizr DSL and CLI also support Dynamic diagrams for showing collaboration/behaviour, and interactions at runtime. Each diagramming tool has its own pros and cons, so using a tool agnostic format to define your model and views provides an easy way to try them all out, and reduce lock-in.
This is one from 5 articles in a series focusing on software architecture diagrams as text. Please check the rest of them, too. Interesting read!
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