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Visualize & edit in the graph

The graph canvas is Dependra’s visual workspace for exploring and editing your IT landscape. It uses an interactive node-and-edge diagram where applications and components are boxes, and dependencies are connecting lines.

Opening the graph

Navigate to the Graph view from the dashboard sidebar. The canvas loads your landscape with all applications and components as draggable nodes and all dependencies as edges.

  • Pan — Click and drag on the canvas background.
  • Zoom — Use the scroll wheel or the zoom controls in the toolbar.
  • Fit to view — Click the fit-to-view button in the toolbar to see all nodes.

View levels

The graph supports two zoom levels:

  • Application-to-Application — Shows high-level relationships between systems. Useful for portfolio reviews and architecture overviews.
  • Component-to-Component — Shows fine-grained relationships between deployable units. Useful for impact analysis and detailed modeling.

Use the toolbar toggle to switch between levels.

Filtering

Use filter pills in the toolbar to control what’s visible on the canvas:

  • Filter by Product Suite to focus on a specific domain.
  • Filter by Application to show only a specific system and its neighbors.
  • Filter by Component kind to highlight only APIs, databases, or other types.

Reducing the number of visible elements improves both readability and performance on large landscapes.

Tip

For large landscapes, start with application-level view and filter to a single Product Suite. Then drill into component-level for the systems you’re focused on.

Editing in the graph

Creating nodes

  1. Right-click on the canvas or use the Add button in the toolbar.
  2. Select the node type (Application or Component).
  3. Fill in the details in the dialog that appears.
  4. The new node appears on the canvas at the click position.

Connecting nodes

  1. Hover over a node to reveal connection handles.
  2. Drag from the source handle to the target node.
  3. Set dependency attributes (type, mode, required) in the dialog.
  4. The new edge appears connecting the nodes.

Editing nodes inline

Click on any node to open the Inspector drawer on the right side. From the inspector you can:

  • Edit the node’s properties
  • View and manage its dependencies
  • See its hosting information
  • Trigger blast radius analysis

Moving nodes

Drag any node to reposition it. Your layout is automatically persisted per user per tenant, so your arrangement is preserved across sessions.

Note

Node positions are saved per user, not globally. Each team member can arrange the graph to suit their own workflow without affecting others.

Dependency visualization

Edges on the graph show:

  • Direction — Arrows indicate which system depends on which.
  • Type and mode — Visible as labels or styles on the edge.
  • Animated propagation — When running blast radius analysis, impacted paths animate to show the failure cascade.

Performance

The graph is built to handle large landscapes. However, for optimal performance:

  • Use filters to reduce the number of visible nodes.
  • Start at the application level before drilling into components.
  • The canvas supports hundreds of nodes comfortably; for very large landscapes, filtering is essential.