Softwarekartographie: Modelle und Methoden zur systematischen Visualisierung von Anwendungslandschaften

The long life-time and the increasing number of application systems used by enterprises lead to complex application landscapes. Enterprises start to consider these application landscapes as highly connected systems used to implement strategies and to plan projects. This work introduces Software Cartography, which provides support for documenting, evaluating, and planning application landscapes. Intuitive graphical views visualizing relevant attributes of application landscapes are introduced to support the management of application landscapes. Based on an explorative analysis of concepts for documenting and planning application landscapes (with BMW Group, Deutsche Post, HVB, Munich Re, Siemens, T-Com et al.), a modeling language is developed and an associated methodology for the use of software maps is presented. The management processes for a longterm and goal-oriented planning and controlling of the application landscape are defined and the usage of the developed modeling language in these processes is presented. Starting with a modeling language including its models and method, requirements for tool support are identified and shortcomings of commercial tools are described. The relationship between semantic and symbolic models of application landscapes is explained to clarify the need for a tight coupling between the semantic information in a repository and the symbols in a software map visualizing an application landscape.