Lexical.cloud’s catalog of metadata enables comparing cloud products for solution candidacy. Labeled attributes can act as criteria for making decisions. This data can be processed, captured and visualized to supplement an ADR with a matrix of product capabilities to support decisions. Let’s dig into an example using the ADR Generator Notebook.

Architecture Decision Records (ADR)

• are a best practice for documenting why an architecture is chosen.
• are evidence of due diligence in the selection process.
• are important for future maintainers of a system.

More context available in Recognizing ADR Value

Disclaimer: Data from Lexical.cloud v0.1.0 is found in the examples below. This version has a long way to go before the data is complete. In the meantime, please be forgiving of inaccuracies.

Our Example

Let’s pretend we’re searching for a SQL compliant database. We can consider where Lexical.cloud intersects Database and SQL Compliant.

As of v0.1.0, the results are:

That’s a lot of options. Let’s add additional requirements for Serverless.

As of v0.1.0, the results are:

That’s a more manageable list. Let’s add one last requirement for MySQL.

As of v0.1.0, the only result is Amazon Aurora:

Looking across all attributes for databases, we can tell what features are available. This is an opportunity to document why features are applicable (or not) for our project at this time. Remember that features and requirements will change. Capturing requirements, the above results and reasoning in one document helps clarify decisions and tradeoffs.