Information Modelling – Information Views
7 min
Information Views are used to capture the particular views of an Information Concept that exist within the business. This tutorial describes how Information Views are captured in Essential Architecture Manager.
Overview
An Information View is a refinement of an Information Concept that describes the 'type' of information used, for example in support of a business process. Different processes and therefore different parts of the organisation will require different Views of the same Concept, e.g. Marketing's view of Customer vs Customer Service's view of Customer. An Information Concept can have many different Views – enabling you to identify and understand the requirements of the many different perspectives that exist of an Information Concept across your organisation.
Examples of Information Views required of the Customer Information Concept:
| Who | Information View |
|---|---|
| Marketing | Customer Segment, Share of Wallet Value, Customer Needs, Profitability Score, Propensity to Buy, etc |
| Customer Service | Contact Details, Customer Satisfaction, Contacts per Annum, Customer Priority (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze) |
The purpose of the Logical Information Layer is not to capture detailed entity relationship diagrams but rather to understand the types of Information elements that exist in the Enterprise Architecture and the dependencies between them.
In each Information View, you can capture the specific attributes that the view has, to enable you to understand the difference between the two views. However, you do not have to capture the attributes for each Information View if this level of detail is not important for your architecture initiatives. You can always add them later.
Examples include:
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Customer::Customer Services View
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Customer::Marketing View
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Customer::Warehouse View
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Product::Marketing View
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Product::SKU
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Client Risk::Compliance View
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Client Risk::Marketing View
By default, we show the name as Information Concept:Information View so that we can group the Views by the Concepts they are refinements of.
Creating an Information View
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Navigate to the Information View class and create a new Information View
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Give the view a name that succinctly describes the particular view of the Concept, e.g. Marketing View.
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Select the concept that the view describes. Essential Architecture Manager will then create the fully-qualified name, Customer::Marketing View for you in the 'name' field.
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Type the name of the View in the View label box; this enables you to use a shortened version of the name in the views that are created. When you move away from this box you will see that the View has been named.
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Add the Information Representations that implement this specific View using the 'Implemented As' slot.
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Once you have completed these, complete as much detail in the form as you can at this time.
When to Create Two (or more) Information Views
Sometimes it is not clear if one Information View has several Representations, or whether it is actually two (or more) Information Views, each with a Representation.
Follow these simple rules for when to create different Information Views:
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The Attributes in the View differ
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The Understanding of the View differs, for example, two or more people in the organisation have a different understanding of what a View means
If, however, the Information View has the same Attributes and the same understanding across users/owners, but there are two different representations, then you may create two Representations of the same View.
Information Views Naming Conventions
Often you will be creating Information Views that support a Business Process and in this case, you can name them in line with the Business Process, for example, the Information View (the different types of data) used in the payroll process could be called Payroll Information. As mentioned above, the same Information View can only be re-used if the contained data is exactly the same, if there are any differences another Information View must be created and given a different name. Again naming along the lines of the process supported is a good idea, examples might be Payroll Detailed Information, Payroll Summary Information, Payroll Spain Information etc.
Do not use the name of an Application as part of the name or description of an Information View; the application could change without the Information View changing.
Updated 31 October 2023