Applications Inventory and Attributes - Understand how the Applications Inventory relates to other inventories
Applications Inventory and Attributes
Chapter 6. Understand how the Applications Inventory relates to other inventories
Executive Summary: Chapter Overview
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Core Concepts
| Concept | Definition & Strategic Role |
|---|---|
| Integration relationships | Uses source and target application identifiers in integration records to calculate application integration summaries. |
| Capability alignment | Links applications to the business capabilities they support, enabling capability-to-application and application-to-capability traversal. |
| Technology profile | Seeds or references the Technologies Inventory through the technologies each application uses. |
| IT operating environments | Connects applications to the governed IT Operating Environments they run in and supports operating-environment governance. |
Quick Q&A
Question: Why are cross-inventory relationships emphasized?
Read More Below
The Applications Inventory connects to the Integrations Inventory through the Integration Summary attribute category. Every active integration involving this application has a record in the Integrations Inventory where this application’s Semantic Identifier appears as either the Source Entity Identifier or the Target Entity Identifier. The Integration Summary attributes in this inventory — Total Integration Count, Inbound Count, Outbound Count, Integration Criticality Rating, and Key Dependencies — are all calculated or derived from those Integrations Inventory records. No manual entry is required or appropriate for any Integration Summary attribute.
The Applications Inventory connects to the Capabilities Inventory through the Business Capability Alignment attribute. Each value in that multi-value attribute references a record in the Capabilities Inventory, and the Capabilities Inventory in turn derives its Application Support Count from the count of Applications Inventory records that reference each capability. This bidirectional relationship makes capability-to-application and application-to-capability traversal possible in both directions through the Enterprise Model.
The Applications Inventory connects to the Technologies Inventory through the Technology Profile attribute. Each technology named in an application’s Technology Profile seeds or references a Technologies Inventory record. The aggregate of all Technology Profile values across all application records is one of the two primary inputs to the Technologies Inventory — enabling the Technologies Inventory to be reverse-engineered from the Applications Inventory rather than built from scratch through independent data collection.
The Applications Inventory connects to the Environments Inventory through the Related IT Operating Environments attribute. Each governed IT Operating Environment in which an application runs seeds or references an Environments Inventory record. For the complete governance model and attribute specification for the Environments Inventory, refer to the IF4IT Environments Inventory and Attributes document and the IF4IT IT Operating Environments Best Practices document.
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