The Lattix LDM 3.0 (Lightweight Dependency Models) product visualizes complex enterprise software systems architectures. Key to the product is its capability of gauging interdependencies between different pieces of software. Lattix leverages a "Dependency Structure Matrix" approach that uses dependencies to build a blueprint of mission-critical software applications.

With LDM, companies can improve quality and lower costs through more effective development, Lattix said. Architecture governance is provided to specify an architecture and detect violations during development. Units of software are represented as classes, with each possessing functionality such as an order or a product, said Neeraj Sangal, president and founder of Lattix.

Lattix's approach is superior to technologies such as UML (Unified Modeling Language) in tackling software complexity, Sangal said in an e-mail.

"Specifically, the current approaches such as UML are too detailed, and quite useful at that level, but fail at a bigger picture level because of inadequate high-level abstraction mechanisms combined with a visual representation that doesn't scale," Sangal said.

In version 3.0, LDM spans databases, Web services, and applications. Users can, for example, find out which applications would be affected by changing a stored procedure in the database.