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Comment on More common mistakes to avoid when creating system architecture diagrams

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Couple of comments:

This can be as simple as adding a type suffix to a resource name (e.g. Orders Table, Results Bucket)

Don't encode types in names. And I disagree somewhat that the names are really needed at all.

Making a “master” diagram

I think such a diagram is useful but obviously each top-level "box" in it doesn't need to contain all sub-components.

Don't encode types in names.

Why? Hungarian notation probably is probably going too far, but in cases where a single word is heavily overloaded encoding types is helpful (eg. image file, image table, image bucket).

I don't think the type needs to be in the name because it is displayed elsewhere in the diagram, possibly as the object's icon. Plus of course the reasons no-one uses Hungarian anymore - types change.

And for your naming, I would probably have something like "Unnormalized orders", "normalised orders", "queued orders", but obviously I can't tell without much more information.

And I disagree somewhat that the names are really needed at all

You want a diagram containing only icons? You will still need a legend somewhere that explains what each icon means, otherwise you will end up with at least as many interpretations of the diagram as there are readers of it.

And I'd say that that first image as shown is virtually useless anyway. There is little value in just laying out resource components without linking them to system operation in some way -- which means that that diagram can only be understood in its larger context, and that's typically not how diagrams are used: they end up being the main focus of discussions.

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