aac 0.0.3

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Architecture-as-Code (AaC)

AaC is a distinctly different take on Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) that allows a system modeller to define a system in simple yaml. This approach allows engineers to apply rigorous configuration management to their baselines (unlike other "boxes and lines" approaches). Our team has spent many years engineering, building, testing, and delivering complex systems. In that time we've seen an enormous amount of effort and money put into system modelling. Unfortunately, it is almost always the case that the system model is either never used by the teams building and delivering product, or it adds complexity to those team's workflow and becomes an impediment. The creators of AaC have spent many years working to adopt and tailor the principles of DevOps within our professional workplaces. We've seen the amazing efficiencies that can be achieved by knocking down the "wall of confusion" between developers and operations and optimizing around system thinking, flow, and continuous improvement through learning and experimentation. We believe the critical tipping point that allowed this to occur was the creation of Infrastructure-as-Code and the adoption of new practices like GitOps that embrace automated quality assurance, automated deployment, and continuous monitoring. Our objective is to knock down the "wall of confusion" that exists between systems engineering and development, optimizing the total system delivery value stream from concept/requirement through to operations with complete traceability and configuration management throughout. We believe we can discover new ways to define, deliver, and evolve complex systems using Architecture-as-Code.

AaC is a self-defining solution. At the heart of the AaC application is a definition of AaC itself. This model is used in validation of itself. Core data types are purposefully simple and can be extended by a user.

AaC is designed with extensibility in mind. The built-in functionallity is intentionally minimized. AaC uses a plug-in system to extend the base capability. To further simplify this, AaC includes a built-in command to generate new plugins from an AaC model. There is an example of this for Plant UML in the plugins folder of the repository and more info below.

Using AaC to Model Your System

AaC is written in python to help make it more approachable for casual users and easily extensible for power users. You will need Python 3.9 or later to run AaC.

To install AaC on Linux or Windows:

pip install aac

To use AaC you first define a model of your system in yaml. Refer to the documentation for more details. A simple model for an EchoService is provided here for reference. Cut and paste the below model into a file called EchoService.yaml.
Note: This is using a little yaml trick to concatenate the content of two yaml files into a single file. ''' data: name: Message fields:

• name: body type: string
• name: sender type: string

---

model: name: EchoService description: This is a message mirror. behavior: - name: echo type: request-response description: This is the one thing it does. input: - name: inbound type: Message output: - name: outbound type: Message acceptance: - scenario: onReceive given: - The EchoService is running. when: - The user sends a message to EchoService. then: - The user receives the same message from EchoService. '''

Now you can run AaC against your model. ''' aac validate EchoService.yaml '''

AaC has some core "root types" for you to work with. You can see the root types of data and model used in the example above. The AaC core root types are:

• data: Allows you to model data types used within your system as named types with fields.
• enum: Allows you to model enumerated types (types with only specific values allowed).
• model: Allows you to model the behavioral elements of your system. These can be abstract or concrete.
• usecase: Allows you to model the sequence of interactions between your models.
• ext: Allows you to easily extend the AaC model itself and tailor things to your needs.

Although you can use the yaml trick above when modelling your system, it would be better to keep things more structured and organized. To help with this AaC allows you to define each item you model in a separate file and then import it as needed. To do this just put an import at the root of your model file.

Here's an example of the EchoService broken into two files:

• Message.yaml ''' data: name: Message fields:

  • name: body type: string
  • name: sender type: string '''

• EchoService.yaml ''' import:

  • ./Message.yaml model: name: EchoService description: This is a message mirror. behavior:
    • name: echo type: request-response description: This is the one thing it does. input:
      • name: inbound type: Message output:
      • name: outbound type: Message acceptance:
      • scenario: onReceive given:
      • The EchoService is running. when:
        • The user sends a message to EchoService. then:
        • The user receives the same message from EchoService.

  ''' Ok, so that's interesting, but what can you do with the AaC model once you've built it? AaC is designed and built on years of experimentation, experience, and learning. But this version is a brand new implementation rewritten entirely in Python in an attempt to make AaC more user friendly to both the casual user and the power user. Right now AaC doesn't have a lot of additional features. But new plugins are being created to deliver more functionallity. Over time there will be plugins available to use the AaC model to auto-generate content for reviews, documentation, and even system devleopment and deployment.

AaC Plugins

A simple example of one of the plugins mentioned above is the Plant UML plugin in the /plugins/aac-plantuml directory of this repository. This plugin allows you to generate component diagrams, object diagrams, and sequence diagrams from the AaC model of your system. You can test this yourself by using the models in the /model director of this repository.

To build the Plant UML plugin, first we modeled the plugin behavior we wanted using AaC. I'll walk you through building that plugin so you can build your own plugin for your own need.

1. Model the Plugin behavior using AaC
   • The /plugins/aac-plantuml/aac-plantuml.yaml file contains the specification of 3 desired behaviors.
2. Generate the plugin boiler-plate code.
   • Run aac gen-plugin aac-plantuml.yaml
   • When prompted if you want to write files type "y" and hit enter.
   • Everything you need for a plugin to work in the AaC tool has been generated except the business logic.
   • Note: Plugins have a pre-defined interface. They have 2 arguments: path to the file being processes, and the parsed_model which is a dict. This key is the type name and the value is the model content for that type.
3. Write the business logic for your plug-in.
   • You can see the business logic in /plugins/aac-plantuml/aac_plantuml_impl.py.
   • Note: The other files in the directory are auto-generated and will be overwritten if you rerun gen-plugin. Your plugin impl file will not be overwritten, so keep your business logic here or in other non-generated files.
4. Build your plugin.
   • From your plugin directory run '''pip install -e .''' and your plugin will be built and installed locally.
5. Test your plugin
   • Run '''aac plugin-behavior-name model_file''' to see your plugin in action.
6. If you wish you can now package and publish your plugin to PyPI for other AaC users to download and use.
   • From your plugin directory run '''python -m build'''
   • From your plugin directory run '''python -m twine upload dist/*'''

We're working on other functionallity so keep an eye out for new updates.

Project Setup for Developers

If you want to work on the Core AaC capability in this repository, follow these instructions.

Set up your virtual environment:

$ python3.9 -m venv .env
$ source .env/bin/activate

The dependencies are structured into 3 sections:

• runtime - the dependencies required to run the project
• test - the dependencies required to run the project's automated tests
• dev - the dependencies required to run development tools like linting and quality checks

To install only runtime dependencies simply use pip to install the dependencies:

$ pip install -e .

If you'd like to install the additional dependencies (test and dev), then you can specify that pip include those dependencies like such:

To install test dependencies (test), run this:

$ pip install -e .[test]

To install development dependencies (dev), run this:

$ pip install -e .[dev]

To install all dependencies (runtime, dev, and test), run this:

$ pip install -e .[all]

Testing

To run tests, make sure you've set up your dependencies using pip install -e .[test] (see above). Then, from the project root directory, run the following command (from within your virtual environment).

$ nose2

Running

To run the command, execute the script (from within your virtual environment) as follows:

# For usage information
$ aac --help

# For example, to validate the AaC.yaml file
$ aac validate model/aac/AaC.yaml