[Recipe] Build your application catalog

Mapping the information system means describing several layers. This recipe addresses the application layer.

Which layers can you describe?

• The application layer: represents the applications used in the information system, such as content management systems, customer relationship management (CRM) applications, supply chain management applications, and so on. It can include information about application functions, application interfaces and communication protocols.

• The data layer: represents the data stored in the information system, such as customer data, financial data, production data, and so on. It can include information about databases, data files, data warehouses, data management systems and data management services.

• The infrastructure layer: represents the hardware and software components required to run the information system, such as servers, computers, networks, storage devices, virtualization software, and so on. It can include information about hardware and software configurations, network connections, security protocols, etc.

• The business process layer: represents the business processes and workflows supported by the information system. It can include information on activities, roles, responsibilities, business rules, performance indicators, etc.

How to represent this mapping

The Uses module displays all the data uses, which is why it contains the Application object.

Thanks to the Application object, you can:

• Have a dedicated object card to describe the applications

• For reporting-type applications, list all the reports

• Link it to:
  • The data managed, by linking it to the glossary

  • Its data sources (Dictionary module)

  • The processings (Data Processing module)

How to describe an application

A dedicated object card lets you have specific attributes. Here is a non-exhaustive list of attributes that can be used to describe an application:

• Description: use the editor's attributes.

• Identification: there is often an internal code to identify applications. An attribute can be dedicated to this.

• Owner

• List of user entities

• Type of technology: rich client, web, etc.

• Access URL

• Type of application: internal development, software, package

• Volume of users and profiles: for this attribute, it may be interesting to use time series attributes to measure possible progressions.

How to create the application clusters

To make things easier for everyone to understand, it is often useful to create application clusters, for example by specifying the applications linked to a particular business domain.

As described above, using hierarchies can be detrimental. The best solution is then to use filtered views based on the attributes describing the object cards. For example:

• Applications in a given business domain

• Applications containing personal data

• Applications hosted on a particular server

This approach has several other advantages:

• These filtered views are shareable and easily accessible via the search.

• They can be set as the default view of the Uses module.

A second way of working is to use the domain notion to describe your districts and blocks. You can then:

• Have a dedicated object card to describe it

• Have an object that can be easily called from any DataGalaxy object

• Easily surface the information on the object cards thanks to shortcut attributes

How to represent the application clusters

Once the applications have been described in detail, it can be very useful to represent the links on a free diagram. This gives you a view of the different links between your applications. You can also use the available colors to represent the application clusters.

What to do next

An application mapping makes sense in DataGalaxy because you can link it to:

• The business data used

• The possible technical layers: sources and other flows

To go further, this mapping can be linked to business processes. You will then be able to understand when the application is used and in which context.

Read more

• Manage uses

• Create data processing items

• Input or output objects to a data processing