Galdos Systems helps organizations to understand their enterprise system requirements, and to devise architectures that meets those requirements. Galdos assists with both the development and the communication of conceptual system architectures, and illustrates those benefits to management and other stakeholders.
The development of an enterprise system architecture has many dimensions including functionality, data security, messaging and data storage, performance, extensibility and flexibility, and interfaces to users and existing systems. Galdos is experienced in the application of RMODP (Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing) to complex information systems. Galdos takes a pragmatic approach to the use of RMODP that yields effective and actionable results in a timely and efficient manner.
Galdos also has extensive experience in geospatial information systems, understanding the complexity created by coordinate reference systems and coordinate transformations, data encoding, geometry and topology, and the complicated rules of data sharing between multiple departments or even multiple organizations, each with their own business models, data models, and software platforms.
Development of System Architectures
Galdos provides a range of services related to the development of enterprise information system architectures, including:
- Requirements Acquisition and Analysis
- Development of an Enterprise Model
- Development of an Information Model (see Data Modeling)
- Conceptual Architecture – Computational View
- Technical/Engineering Architecture
These tasks can be undertaken singly or as parts of a larger project. Galdos can work with organizations on a single activity, or from initial concept to final resolution, or provide a technical audit of what has already done. Galdos works with a variety of development methodologies, and adapts the project activities into any desired methodology or approach, whether it be the traditional waterfall, incremental, agile, or design by build.
Requirements Acquisition and Analysis
Galdos understands the requirements acquisition process. Requirements acquisition is much like the discovery phase of a legal trial; it starts with everything on the table, and then narrows the focus to the things which are really needed. Galdos typically interviews key stakeholders and develops a base of information, which is then analyzed into a set of use cases that identify:
- What the system is for
- Who the human and machine users or actors are
- What the system will be used for
- What data will be used
- What conditions are the pre-requisites to these uses being undertaken
- What exceptional conditions must be considered
In addition to the functional requirements, Galdos collects and analyses requirements for data security, performance, and flexibility and extensibility. At the conclusion, there will be a clearly defined set of requirements, expressed in a Statement of Requirements document, that serves as the foundation for all subsequent design.
Enterprise Model Development
Galdos has found enterprise models to be especially helpful in providing the context for a new enterprise system, and for communicating to senior management. An enterprise model is a model of a business or enterprise which is used to set the context for the system being built. Galdos takes great care, when developing the enterprise model, to make it clear and understandable, as it is the piece of information that bridges the gap between management stakeholders and information systems professionals, providing a common view of what is to be built.
Conceptual Architecture and Components
Having a clear conceptual architecture is very often the difference between success and failure. Making engineering decisions about platforms, standards, or technologies, at a point where the information flows and processing functions are not clearly understood, can be a major mistake. Galdos helps to avoid this by working to developing a complete conceptual architecture that is independent of how the system will be built. The conceptual architecture describes the system in terms of a set of logical components and the data transformations enacted by those components. Components may be logically group or broken apart to given different perspectives on the overall system, and Galdos provides a mapping of the conceptual architecture to the use cases in the Statement of Requirements, enabling us to explain how these components work together to realize each system usage.
