View Notations

View notations (or key/legend) provide information about the meanings of shapes and styles. It’s important to provide a key explaining the difference in colors and shapes.

It is possible to define global notations (per element kind) and local (per view).

Global notations

As comes from the name, global notations apply to all views, and defined in the specification block:

specification {

  element customer {
    notation "Person, Customer"
    style {
      shape person
      color green
    }
  }

  element staff {
    notation "Person, Staff"
    style {
      shape person
    }
  }
}

Notations will be applied to all views with these elements and displayed as:

notations

Live example.
Expand the following view and click on help icon in bottom right:

Local notations

Local notations override global ones and apply to a specific view.

With style predicate

When you change the style, you can add a notation to explain the meaning:

view {

  style webApp1, webApp2 {
    notation "Application under development"
    color amber
  }

  style element.tag = #deprecated {
    notation "Deprecated"
    color muted
  }

}

Notations are not merged or grouped, the last one will be applied.

With overrides

Define notation when include elements:

view {

  include *
    where kind is microservice
      and tag is #deprecated
      with {
        notation "Deprecated microservice"
        shape rectangle
        color muted
      }

}

This override has the highest priority, then defined within style predicates, and finally global notations.