Containers

container models a data store, cache, or external system that services read from or write to.

Example

This example models a database container and shows a service writing to and reading from it.

container orders-db {
  version 1.0.0
  name "Orders DB"
  summary "Primary transactional store"
  container-type database
  technology "PostgreSQL 15"
  access-mode readWrite
  classification internal
  residency "eu-west-1"
  retention "7y"
}

service OrdersService {
  version 1.0.0
  writes-to container orders-db@1.0.0
  reads-from container orders-db@1.0.0
}

Properties

Property	Type	Required	Description	Example
`version`	semver	Yes	Resource version.	`1.0.0`
`name`	string	No	Display name (defaults to id).	`"Orders DB"`
`summary`	string	No	Short description.	`"Primary transactional store"`
`container-type`	enum	Yes	Container category (see types below).	`database`
`technology`	string	No	Implementation detail/version.	`"PostgreSQL 15"`
`authoritative`	boolean	No	Whether it is source of truth.	`authoritative true`
`access-mode`	enum	No	Access pattern (`read`, `write`, `readWrite`, `appendOnly`).	`readWrite`
`classification`	enum	No	Data sensitivity class.	`internal`
`residency`	string	No	Data residency/region.	`"eu-west-1"`
`retention`	string	No	Retention policy/duration.	`"7y"`
`owner`	reference	No (repeatable)	Team/user owner reference.	`owner data-team`
`service`	reference	No (repeatable)	Service references to this container.	`service OrdersService@1.0.0`
`draft`	boolean	No	Marks resource as draft.	`draft true`
`deprecated`	boolean	No	Marks resource as deprecated.	`deprecated true`

Container types

Type	Use for
`database`	Relational or document databases
`cache`	Redis, Memcached, etc.
`objectStore`	S3, GCS, Azure Blob
`searchIndex`	Elasticsearch, OpenSearch
`dataWarehouse`	BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift
`dataLake`	Delta Lake, Iceberg
`externalSaaS`	Third-party managed services
`other`	Anything that doesn’t fit above

Examples by type

container orders-db {
  version 1.0.0
  container-type database
  technology "PostgreSQL 15"
}

container session-cache {
  version 1.0.0
  container-type cache
  technology "Redis 7"
  retention "24h"
}

container assets-bucket {
  version 1.0.0
  container-type objectStore
  technology "AWS S3"
  classification internal
}

container product-search {
  version 1.0.0
  container-type searchIndex
  technology "Elasticsearch 8"
}

Used by services

Usage	Example
Write to a container	`writes-to container orders-db@1.0.0`
Read from a container	`reads-from container orders-db@1.0.0`