Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Impact analysis systems dissected
In this chapter,wewillspendtimewithspeciictypesofsystemsthatwillallow
corporations to perform some of the most complicated operations. In some cases,
their information technology infrastructure will be set up to do this, and in others
this will not be the case. Analyzing and understanding their businesses in the context
of its environment and the impact that the environment has on the business can be
tremendously complex. Doing this, in fact, means that companies need to do two
veryspeciicthings:
• Theyneedtounderstandhowtheirbusinesswillreacttospeciicimpulses
from the environment or other. Assuming that they have modeled their
business as a set of interdependent processes, people, and resources, it is
easy to see how graph databases could be very interesting tools to better
understand what would happen to the rest of the network if a part of the
network changes. We call this the core impact analysis use case.
• They need to be able to simulate different potential scenarios and choose
the most optimalscenariotoachievetheirspeciicobjectives.This,in
some sense, becomes a variation of the previously mentioned scenario,
but is different in the sense that it requires us to iterate on the previously
mentioned scenario many times to determine what would be the optimal
end state of the business to achieve the stated objectives. We will call this
the impact simulation use case.
Let's now closely examine both of these use cases in some more detail and provide
speciicexamplesofboth.
Impact analysis in Business Process
Management
In the Business Process Management use case, we will be exploring how to use
graph database technology to better understand the interdependencies of different
business processes and some of their key resources. This is a use case that many large
organizations call
Business Process Management
, and is sometimes related to or
part of a Business Continuity Management discipline. The idea is plain and simple:
if you are a large corporation, and something happens (a natural disaster, a large
-scalepoweroutage,aire,aviolentterroristattack,oranyothermajorlydisruptive
event that could hit you as a corporation), then it is essentially your responsibility
to prepare for this. The critical step in this preparation process is to understand what
depends on what, which is where Neo4j as a graph database comes in to enable that
kind of understanding.
