Visualizing Differences of Enterprise Architecture Models

Enterprise Architecture (EA) models are structured, object-oriented models that typically conform to an organization-specific, i.e. customized, meta-model that evolves over time. Enterprise architects commonly use different branches of such an EA model to plan future states of an EA with respect to their origin–the current state of an EA. It is particularly interesting for enterprise architects to analyze differences of planned states to this current state of an EA. Based on these differences they can derive projects as means to carry out changes in order to realize planned states as temporally limited end. In our previous work, we focus on the evolution of models and meta-models, model differencing, merging, and conflict detection and resolution. A particular challenge we observed is the communication of model differences. We diagnose that as of today, no common standard to visualize and analyze differences in models and in particular Enterprise Architecture (EA) models has been established. In this paper, we present a four-layered conceptual design of an interactive visualization to drill down and analyze model differences in meta-models (schema) and respective models (data). Our design copes with the complexity of an EA model and provides mechanisms to filter particular parts of an EA model. We reveal implementation details of the concept, discuss end-user feedback on our prototype and point out some known limitations of the approach. Keywords—visual differences; models; differencing; interactive visualization; Enterprise Architecture