Viewpoints are used to model taxonomies within Waltz. These taxonomies are defined by the customer and elements within these taxonomies are used to describe the overall enterprise landscape.
One of the core entities within Waltz is the viewpoint and a large part of Waltz's functionality
deals with how those viewpoints relate to each other and the technology landscape. Viewpoints
are assigned to categories and organised hierarchically within a category.
Example categories are:
| Functions | Products |
|---|---|
 |
 |
As can be seen above, viewpoint categories vary in size and complexity and can be periodically refreshed to capture changing business needs. The blue bars next to some viewpoints indicate that applications have been associated to them. The size of the bar gives an impression of how many (cumulative) applications are associated.
It is important to note that these viewpoint taxonomies are all data defined and can be amended, merged and sub-divided as required.
Waltz supports numerous relationships involving viewpoints. The primary relationships are:
- Application Ratings
- Inter-viewpoint relationships
Applications can be rated against viewpoints using custom rating schemes. Typical rating schemes are Buy/Sell/Hold, Strategic/Non-Strategic, Supports/Does not support etc. Each rating is expressed as a simple relationship and may, optionally, include a description and a date (for expressing upcoming relationship additions/deletions).
| Application | Rating | Viewpoint |
|---|---|---|
Veriflex |
Strategic |
Compliance Services |
Applications can have many of these ratings and they are depicted in the ui as a set of trees grouped by the viewpoint category.
For example here are the functions and products for the application Veriflex:
| Functions | Products |
|---|---|
 |
 |
- As these ratings are stored as simple relationships it is not possible to state more complex expressions.
- For example we could not say the this application does not perform the function
Compliance Servicesfor product typeComplex Exotic - This leads to Waltz potentially overstating the scope of applications.
- For example we could not say the this application does not perform the function
- Note this can be somewhat mitigated by introducing perspectives
- see Using Perspectives and Drill Grid at a cost of increased complexity.
Viewpoints can be linked to other viewpoints to allow a relationships between taxonomy elements to be
expressed independently from their realization at the application level (via ratings). Similarly to
ratings these relationships are expressed as a simple tuple and the relationship type can be
defined (though is typically left with the default, Relates To)
| Viewpoint A | Relationship Kind | Viewpoint B |
|---|---|---|
Compliance Services |
Relates To |
BCBS239 |
Viewpoints can be related to any number of additional viewpoints across any categories. Relationships
are directional (e.g. A supports B, does not imply B supports A) and may have supporting text.
Within the Waltz user interface these relationships are depicted using the 'spindle' diagram, as shown
below for Compliance Services:
In this diagram we have filtered on related Regulations and selected BCBS239. Note that these relationships
are navigable in the user interface so we may quickly refocus on BCBS239 if desired.
- Only simple relationships are possible.
- We could not say something like: function TBC relates to TBC only for subject TBC.
In addition to ratings and inter-viewpoint relationships Waltz also supports relationships from viewpoints to....
| Relationship | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| People | via roles. e.g. Compliance could have a Data Owner associated with it |  |
| Bookmarks | External documentation/resources |  |
| Application groups | custom groups, visualised via the spindle |  |
| Flow diagrams | Diagrams showing a particular data flow. Each flow effectively becomes a custom application group. |  |
It is worth discussing the final two categories (groups and diagrams) in more detail as they may allow for more detailed modelling of a problem space. An application group is simply a collection of applications, some groups are manually curated and others are periodically generated (e.g. one customer generates Data Council groups).
Flow diagrams are used to illustrate a path through the enterprise, for example: trade flows from capture through to settlement. The diagrams are stored as a 'Bill of Materials' allowing them to be effectively used as a custom application group. These may be useful in generating regulatory responses for specific questions. E.g. "show me the flows of data around Mortgages dealing with Spanish citizens", in this case the data in Waltz held against the viewpoints could be used to quickly narrow the problem space to a discrete set of applications and a flow diagram could be drawn. Additional information could be gathered by targeting surveys against either the resultant groups or against relevant viewpoints.