Visible Advantage™

Visible Advantage™ is a software engineering and repository product for complex, cross-functional enterprise class development. Unlike other similar tools on the market, it supports multiple users simultaneously, so that analysts, designers, and software engineers (the entire project team) can work on various parts of an application or business model without having to reconcile the conflicting changes to the master model after the fact. Visible Advantage supports the development of new information systems, the redevelopment of legacy systems, and the reengineering of business processes. Gartner Group stated "IE: Advantage (now called Visible Advantage) is a Workgroup CASE tool with an Enterprise CASE mentality" because it automates business planning, data modeling, data access and business process modeling, object-oriented design, data reverse engineering, document and report generation, and more!

Download the Visible Advantage brochure (PDF - 72.0 KB)

Overview of Visible Advantage

The World's Best Software Engineering Modeling Tool!

Visible Advantage is a full life-cycle, integrated software engineering modeling tool that helps organizations to automate projects that involve business management, strategic business planning, new systems development, existing systems redevelopment, and information systems management. It fully supports all phases of the business planning and systems development life cycles.

In today's competitive environment, organizations must find ways to effect business changes quickly, reengineer work and information systems, implement strategic business plans, and tie business requirements to information systems development. Visible Advantage was designed and developed to help organizations improve business operations and build integrated systems.

Visible Advantage is a software engineering and repository product for complex, cross-functional enterprise class development. It automates all phases of the software development life-cycle and supports business planning, systems development and redevelopment (forward and reverse engineering), systems management, and specialized applications development. Visible Advantage utilizes a comprehensive organization-wide repository, including the complete documented business model linked to the supported system designs enabling an organization to effect strategic management throughout the organization.

Visible Advantage can be used to evaluate the business plan, data model, process model, and system design for quality, completeness, implementability, and consistency, allowing an organization to build, migrate, redesign, and integrate systems. It allows an organization to identify errors and inconsistencies before they become business or systems problems. Visible Advantage is uniquely suited to development of an enterprise information architecture and strategic information warehouse. Visible Advantage is the only integrated modeling tool that allows enterprise needs and measures to be linked directly to a strategic information warehouse data model, enterprise data dictionary, legacy data integration and transformation process models, and the information warehouse database design - all in a single corporate repository.

Two editions of Visible Advantage are now available:

Enterprise Architecture Edition - The only tool that integrates two key government standards, IDEF1X and IDEF0 in one systems, eliminating the need for risky and untimely data exchange. It also provides users with an automated cost-tracking function for analyzing the cost of business activities. Another unique feature is user-defined diagrams, which enables application developers to apply their internally devised methodologies which using Visible Advantage.

Find out more about Visible Advantage Enterprise Architecture Edition .

Data Warehouse Edition - Visible's new DW edition dramatically accelerates the data warehouse construction life cycle. Visible Advantage Data Warehouse Edition enforces data warehouse principles and techniques by its unique ability to map and trace complex business requirements from inception through Data Warehouse Design and building. The new tool is also uniquely suited to allow the integration of existing Data Marts by tracking the common data in the various data marts to their corresponding elements in the Data Warehouse.

Find out more about Visible Advantage Data Warehouse Edition .

With almost 20 years of experience in designing tools, improving the Enterprise Engineering methodology, and providing facilitation, training, and consulting, Visible Systems Corporation and Visible Advantage can help organizations now and into the 21st century.

Tool Generations

First and second generation tools require data model and process model diagrams to be manually drawn and maintained. They require project plans to be manually developed and maintained for project management. Some tools support code generation, but the logic must first be manually defined in action diagrams. These action diagrams are then compiled to "generate" code. But logic should not have to be manually defined, like program logic that is compiled: it should be able to be automatically generated directly from data model and process model diagrams.

In contrast, third generation tools such as Visible Advantage:

• Automatically generate data model and process model diagrams, and maintain them up-to-date
• Automatically derive project plans directly from data models, and maintain those plans up-to-date
• Automatically derive object-oriented process model logic directly from data models

Multiple Products

Many tool vendors require that you purchase separate products for each phase in the life-cycle. Multiple copies of these tools are often required for individual use by each project team member, and so represent a major financial investment for a project.

In contrast, Visible Advantage provides all capabilities in one product: available at all times across the entire project life-cycle. It is a project-oriented Enterprise Information Architecture Toolset: only one copy of the product is needed for a project. If project deadlines allow processing of concurrent projects one at a time, these multiple projects can all be managed by a single copy of Visible Advantage. Only if those projects must all be processed concurrently are multiple copies needed of Visible Advantage.

Client-Server Operation

Visible Advantage operates on any machine that supports Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP or Windows NT, 2000, or 2003 server execution, in either a stand-alone or a networked environment using either the stand-alone or client-server editions of the product.

The stand-alone edition of Visible Advantage allows multiple concurrent projects to be processed - each independent of the others - either in a stand-alone fashion on separate unconnected machines, or on a network. The project encyclopedias from each of these machines can later be automatically merged by Visible Advantage to consolidate separate projects into a larger project encyclopedia.

Alternatively, the Visible Advantage client-server edition can be used to support these concurrent projects, all operating as concurrent users in a client-server environment against a central encyclopedia on a server on the network.

Enterprise Information Architecture

Visible Advantage allows you to capture your ultimate Enterprise Information Architecture and map it to your legacy systems, new systems, and your data warehouse(s). This allows you to perform gap analysis to identify items you missed or want to drop, and transition planning from legacy to architected systems.

Software Package Evaluation

The functionality of a commercial application software package can be analyzed and compared with the model of your actual requirements. The degree of support for your individual requirements provided by the software package can then be evaluated as part of a purchase and/or customizing decision.

Full Life-Cycle Support

Visible Advantage automates all of the tasks and techniques of Enterprise Engineering and supports: business, scientific or engineering systems planning and development; new systems development (forward engineering); legacy systems redevelopment (reverse and reengineering, including business reengineering); systems management and infrastructure evolution; system implementation in any language, platform or architecture; and creation of a comprehensive repository for your organization.

Tomorrow's Technology Today

Visible Advantage is a powerful software engineering modeling tool. The methodology-based central repository evaluates plans, logical models, and physical designs for consistency and completeness while they are being built. Automatic quality assurance ensures model integrity throughout. Linked plans, models, designs, and systems form networked objects of reusable logic. This approach will allow new systems to be assembled-to-order versus made-to-order.

Visible Advantage establishes a new standard for the state-of-the-art in software engineering technology and offers the functionality and flexibility that can help organizations develop better new systems, regardless of type. This allows customers to leverage legacy systems into the future and accommodate any target technology for implementation. Encyclopedia and model management, business planning, data modeling, process modeling, systems design, implementation, and quality assurance are fully automated across the entire project life cycle.

Visible Advantage automatically draws data and process model diagrams from repository information and automatically keeps them up-to-date. It can derive and automatically generate object-oriented process model logic directly from data models. Multiple physical designs can be captured in one encyclopedia allowing organizations to cross-reference a single logical attribute to the various systems and locations the attribute is implemented in.