Enterprise Navigator: A System for Visualizing and Analyzing Software Infrastructures
Adam L. Buchsbaum · 1999
Operations of today’s large corporations are usually supported by complex software infrastructures that involve hundreds or thousands of software systems. Companies frequently need to redesign their software infrastructures in response to changes in the marketplace. This paper describes Enterprise Navigator, a system that allows architects to visualize system interconnections of selected products and services by making database queries on the web. Moreover, analysis tools are provided for the architects to examine dominating information flows, perform clustering analysis to find substructures, and study the structural evolution of particular business processes or functions. The system has been used extensively on AT&T’s System Profile Database (SPDB). A case study is included in this paper to show how an architect can use Enterprise Navigator to perform various visualization and analysis tasks.