Tutorial: Model an Application Technology Stack

This tutorial models Technologies used by an Application and shows how technology lifecycle becomes application exposure.

Northstar example

The demo already contains:

Customer Portal ── uses ──► Amazon EKS
Customer Portal ── uses ──► PostgreSQL 17

It also contains a deliberately risky example:

Regulatory Reporting ── uses ──► Python 2.7

Python 2.7 is seeded with lifecycle End of Support and strategic status Retire.

1. Open an application

Search for Customer Portal and open the Application.

Review fields such as lifecycle, criticality, business fit, technical fit, and hosting model.

2. Review existing Technologies

Open the Relationships tab and locate uses relationships. Open Amazon EKS and PostgreSQL 17 in separate tabs if useful.

Notice that Technology objects contain lifecycle and strategy information independently from the Application.

3. Add another Technology relationship

If you want to practice in the demo, add a valid Technology relationship to a temporary Application you created rather than changing Northstar's core sample.

For an Application, choose:

Relationship: uses
Target: an existing Technology

4. Compare with the risky example

Search for Regulatory Reporting and open its Technology relationship to Python 2.7.

Then open Analytics or the object's analytics view and review the relationship between:

• Technology lifecycle/support status
• Technology Risk
• Application technology exposure
• Application Risk
• Findings

OpenEA's Application Risk uses the highest persisted risk among directly related Technologies rather than averaging away a single high-risk dependency.

5. Architecture lesson

Model Technologies at the architectural product/platform level relevant to decision-making—not every runtime instance.

A good Technology relationship answers:

"This Application depends on this technology choice in a way that matters to lifecycle, strategy, support, risk, or architecture planning."