Landscape

Landscape Viewpoint

IT lanscape, composed by hundred of applications and components is difficult to model. A single and comprehensive model is often too complex to be understood.

That’s why it’s important to introduce views and viewpoints.

Using TOGAF terminology, A view is a representation of a whole system from the perspective of a related set of concerns. A viewpoint defines the perspective from which a view is taken. Viewpoint a kind of template, and View is an instantiation of a a specific viewpoint

This first version of the tool implement a unique ViewPoint : Application Landscape. As explained below, itś equivalent to Archimate Application Cooperation Viewpoint.

Example

A landscape is essentially a collection of Applications and the interactions between these applications. It provides a comprehensive view of the applications in a specific domain or area, along with the relationships and connections between them. This view serves as a holistic representation of how different software components work together within that domain.

Functional Flow, on the other hand, can be thought of as use cases that are typically represented using sequence diagrams. They describe how specific functions or processes are carried out within the landscape. Functional flows provide a detailed and step-by-step depiction of how applications interact and work together to achieve a particular task or goal.

In a more extensive perspective, a landscape can be considered as the sum of all functional flows within a functional domain. Put differently, Landscape consolidates and integrates all the interactions, applications, and functional flows, offering a comprehensive overview that encompasses and includes all interactions and processes occurring within the landscape.

In this example, Landscape in composed of 2 Functional Flows : GEN.001 and GEN.002.

NEXT : If you want to continue to dicover the metamodel, see what is a Functional Flow.

Mapping with Archimate specification

An application landscape is typically an Application Cooperation Viewpoint.

Archimate 3.1

• Architecture View - A representation of a system from the perspective of a related set of concerns.
• Architecture Viewpoint - A specification of the conventions for a particular kind of architecture view.
• The Application Cooperation Viewpoint describes the relationships between application components in terms of the information flows between them, or in terms of the services they offer and use. This viewpoint is typically used to create an overview of the application landscape of an organization.

In EADesignIt, we use Application Cooperation Viewpoint used the following elements:

• Application Components
• Flow Relationship

Static or dynamic ?

This viewpoint can be static or dynamic:

• In a static context, it displays application services and accessed data.
• In a dynamic context, it models behavioral dependencies using flows.

EADesignIt is used to model the dynamic version of this viewpoint, without the application service concept for simplified diagrams, useful for illustrating end-to-end data flows across many applications.

For the big picture, this might be good enough to guide the architecture development. As a complementary diagram for more detailed solution design in projects, you might want to use UML sequence diagrams that show in detail the data flows from one application to another (including confirmation messages that are important for solution design but not at a higher architecture level). That’s why EADesignIt introduce yhe notion of Functional Flow

Flow Relationships modeling convention

When dealing with the dynamic application cooperation viewpoint and the use of flow relationships, it’s important to establish a convention that dictates the number of flow relationships permissible between applications:

• You can choose between adding one flow relationship for each data object, which provides details like exchange frequency but may result in cluttered diagrams,
• Or opt for one flow relationship per technology interface, which offers a clearer big-picture view

EADesignIT unequivocally embraces the second option by introducing the concept of Interface to denote this singular relationship between two applications, specifically for a given technology.

Interesting post with some additional information could be read here

What’s next ?

NEXT : If you want to continue to dicover the metamodel, see what is a Functional Flow.