
Show HN: Ilograph – Interactive AWS Serverless Architecture Diagram - Veuxdo
https://app.ilograph.com/demo.ilograph.Ilograph
======
peternicky
Interesting, here is my feedback:

\- why am I unable to select text on the site

\- who is the intended audience for this product?

\- When will this be available? You mention "early 2019"; I'd argue we are
past that point. You should update this to clarify for users. I'm pretty much
done giving my email to join a waitlist.

\- can users explore the existing AWS collection of serverless applications?

~~~
Veuxdo
Hey, thanks for your feedback. It definitely shouldn't say "early" 2019
anywhere, just 2019. I'll update. Private beta had begun already, with the
first invites having gone out, so do sign up if you're interested.

Ilograph is for system, software, network and other engineers looking for a
diagramming platform that is more robust and precise than existing drag-and-
drop offerings. In fact, the multi-perspective capability of ilographs lets
engineers from different disciplines share their unique views of a single
system.

By default, text isn't selectable by design; this was done so things like
buttons and nav elements don't get highlighted. You should be able to select
most text in the diagrams themselves, including notes and the source, but I'll
look at making more things selectable.

I'm not sure I understand your last question. I can't make the AWS resources
themselves public for browsing, I don't think.

Anyway, thanks again for checking it out and for your feedback!

~~~
cj
> Ilograph is for system, software, network and other engineers looking for a
> diagramming platform

I'm actively looking for a tool for this. Any recommendations while we wait
for your tool to exit beta?

~~~
Veuxdo
There are quality diagramming tools out there, but none like this that I know
of. Email me (beta@ilograph.com) for a beta account.

------
OJFord
This has been here before right? But as I recall the last one this is a much
bigger more involved demo. (Still) Looks great!

Idea: hook into terraform somehow, so a certain amount (boxes and nesting) can
be automated; of course user's still going to need to add the relationships
between them / annotations like 'PUT login' and whatever.

edit: ah, yes, found the previously shared demo from a link I sent to a
colleague -
[https://app.ilograph.com/demo.Drupal%20on%20AWS](https://app.ilograph.com/demo.Drupal%20on%20AWS)
;
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104734)

~~~
Veuxdo
Hey, you're exactly right about Terraform (any CF). It could definitely just
extract the resources as a tree and let the user create perspectives for them.
Consider it on the roadmap :)

And yeah, those are mine. This demo is a little more focused and shows off the
source (people asked last time) and other new features, so I hope it's kosher.

~~~
OJFord
I think the rules are generally if there's something new to show, it's cool to
Show it. Definitely interesting to see the YAML that generates it; pretty
minimal, it's nice.

I'm certainly glad to be reminded about it, and I've joined the waiting list
this time! (Maybe I did last time too, but I assume it can't hurt. It'd be
great for putting things together as I go, starting a new job next week... ;)
)

~~~
Veuxdo
Cool, thanks. Look for an invite in the next day or so.

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not_kurt_godel
This is a fantastic way to visualize AWS architecture. Well done! Is there a
way to use it for my own architecture?

~~~
OJFord
Not the author, but if you expand the left-hand sidebar you can see it's all
generated from YAML, so you can use it for whatever you want; even something
nothing to do with web services, if it can be visualised as nested boxes with
arrows between them.

------
vinodkd
Multi-level visualization of a tech stack with perspectives and semantic
zoom.Nice!

Two questions: 1\. How do you plan to handle the scale of real-world
applications, ie really deep hierarchies, really long "call stacks"? 2\. Will
you support actual graphs with loops at some point, or will ilographs be
trees?

~~~
Veuxdo
Hey, cheers, very astute questions.

1) Yep, I have a plan to implement "collapsed" nodes when zoomed out of large
perspectives. This is pretty straightforward when resources are nested since
you can just show the parent node (and an indicator that there are children).
Also, when a perspective gets too large or busy, you can always make another!

2) Trees work best in perspectives of course, but there is some support for
loops (see
[https://app.ilograph.com/Git%2520Webhooks%2520on%2520AWS/Exe...](https://app.ilograph.com/Git%2520Webhooks%2520on%2520AWS/Execution)).
There's no perfect way to display generic graphs with loops, so I'm still
experimenting with the algorithm to lay them out.

------
djKianoosh
Nice.. your chevrons don't seem to display, but my org might be blocking
fonts...

Will it be possible to run this internally, as in, inside a firewall? Might be
useful for enterprise customers.

~~~
Veuxdo
Hey, it could definitely be your org, but I'll investigate fallbacks if the
icons fail to load. Thanks for the heads up.

Right now ilograph is a SaaS app, so it would take some work to get it on-
prem. Definitely possible though. That's a little further down the road; for
the beta I'm focused more on the product and tech. All the same, thanks for
the feedback!

------
KaiserPro
Very nice, reminds me of the sequoia graphs for filesystems.

Is there any way to generate the graph from Cloudformation? or is it a manual
thing for the moment

~~~
Veuxdo
Hi, thanks for checking it out.

At the moment it is manual, though I have experimented with converting CF
templates locally. Extracting the resources is pretty straightforward.
Generating the perspectives and descriptions would still be a manual process,
in most cases.

