Architecture of Sonar
The core engine of the platform, Squid, is supported by additional code analyzers which Sonar orchestrates together to measure quality.
The following diagram represents the upper-level components of the platform and how they interact with each other:
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1. An analysis request is triggered using one of three possible methods:
Maven Plugin
Ant Task
Java Runner
2. Sonar receives the request and starts analyzing the project's source code. The analysis is based on the project's Sonar profile activating any additional plugins or reporting capabilities, if any.
3. When the analysis is over, results are stored to a database for future reference and history tracking.
4. Finally, the user interface and its components are updated with the new data. You can access data from your browser and the web dashboard. Conveniently, Sonar reporting is also made available within your IDE, either Eclipse or IDEA, allowing you to review and correct code violations on the spot.
In a continuously integrated environment, the analysis process is triggered by the build server. The server checks out source code from the repository, compiles and executes all unit or integration tests, after which it produces the necessary builds. Finally, Sonar takes over analyzing the source. A good practice for a time-consuming process such as this is to trigger it once a day, when developers are inactive. The process is then called a nightly job and the final build produced a nightly snapshot. Next time, developers will have access to the latest data and reports about the project, enabling them to review how recent changes affected the overall quality of the project.
