What are components?

Every component has a type, so you can categorize components based on their capabilities. You set a component’s type when you create it, and can change its type at any time.

The following component types are available in Compass:

• Custom* — A type created and managed by a Compass product admin, where they choose names to categorize components their software teams own.

• Service — An independently-deployable software unit that is usually is operated by a person or a team. Services can be as large as monoliths or smaller microservices. Service components have a Tier field to indicate how critical the service is to your business.

• Library — A reusable collection of objects, functions, and methods. A library is typically used by other components.

• Application — A fully-packaged application, like a mobile application, desktop application, or a CLI-type tool.

• Capability — A higher-level product functionality that end-users understand and in which they see value. A capability is an abstraction of one or more underlying software components that power it.

• Cloud resource — An entity or service provided by a cloud vendor, with consumer-managed configuration and monitoring.

• Data pipeline — A sequence of tools and processes used to automate the transformation and movement of data from a source to a target system.

• Machine learning model — An algorithm that identifies patterns in a data set and makes predictions over it.

• UI element — Reusable building blocks of a design system that meet a specific interaction or user interface need and work together to create patterns and user experiences.

• Website — A single web page or a collection of related web pages under a single domain. Websites mainly consist of audio-visual or text content for reading, listening, or viewing. People can't edit, contribute to, or affect the website content. Websites are typically publicly accessible and don't require authentication.

• Dataset — A collection of data about a specific topic that can be referenced by code, generally a table.

• Dashboard — Data visuals that provide views of key performance indicators relevant to a particular objective or business process.

• Data product — A governed, self-contained, cohesive, read-optimized data unit.

• Other — A component that doesn’t match the service, library, or application type.

*This feature is available in Compass on Standard and Premium plans.