Generating Drill Down Application Landscapes

Whatever the tool, it should always bring you a lot of productivity!!! And with productivity, we mean the tool does the heavy work for you.

Dragon1 is a tool that generates Application Landscape Diagrams for you. Like the one on the right.

Dragon1 is a digital platform featuring web applications such as the Architecture Repository and the Visual Designer. These two help you to become more productive: they generate an application landscape for you (i.e., several views).

Go to the Step by Step guide here: https://www.dragon1.com/help/step-by-step-guide

1-2-3 Approach

It is what we call the 1-2-3 approach:

• 1. Importing Data (via an Excel sheet or .csv file)
• 2. Setting Up Generation Rules
• 3. Tuning the Generated Application Landscape

And you're ready!

1. Importing Data

Here is a screenshot of an MS Excel file with some data. You see applications, the domains they belong to, their costs, their owner, and the processes they support, etc...

With this information, you can already do a lot of application landscape generation. However, first, let's import the data. In the second screenshot, you see how we have set up the import tool to import the data file.

In the third screenshot, you see how we have mapped the input of the file onto known data types in the Architecture Repository.

In the fourth screenshot, you see the data imported into the Architecture Repository.

If you want, you can do some data, enriching or tweaking, here in the Architecture Repository.

2. Setting up Generation Rules

Wouldn't it be nice if you could generate an overview of an application domain and click on a domain to drill down to the applications in that domain, and next you could choose between several views of that domain?

On Dragon1, you can do that!

First, you create a model of your data (meaning you create relationships between the data elements). Next, you define views with rules on top of your data (to filter out unnecessary data).

In the next screenshot, you see how to set up a rule in the domains view to drill down on click to an applications view. You can set up to 10 rules in one view. Another rule set for this view is to retrieve all domain data from the model and display it in a rectangular matrix (left to right, top to bottom).

In the next screenshot, you see a generated domain overview using the view linked to a visualization.

In the next screenshot, you see a generated application overview shown if you drill down on the shoe domain.

This will do for now: we could generate a basic landscape.

3. Tuning the Generated Application Landscape

Once the application landscape is generated (with the first four or five views), you might want to change the default shapes and colors slightly.

You can also use a color stylesheet and corporate branding with logs to create a very effective visual.

You can also add a rule to the view stating that shapes need to get a color if an attribute has a certain value. For instance, color all the applications red that are missing the contract.

The last thing now is to publish the visualizations by clicking on the blue share button in the Visual Designer, so the visualizations are visible in the Viewer.

You are ready to mail the link to a stakeholder. The next screenshot illustrates how stakeholders can browse and view your application landscape on their mobile device.

Below is a live example of a generated and tuned application landscape:

Generate Application Landscapes Yourself?

If you want to generate application landscapes yourself on Dragon1, you only have to purchase a Dragon1 PRO user license, and we will support you via email, phone, and Teams.