C.6 Joining Views Around a Scenario

An engineering question may span several models without requiring one larger stored model. Keep question-specific representations separate and join them through stable identities when a cross-model property must be evaluated.

Engineering question. Does an important user journey exercise its declared endpoints, receive the required test coverage and placement, and execute under the correct host policy?

Figure C.6-1 traces the join.

Composition by reference — join small views on stable identities, not one mega-model A cross-model question is answered by joining small, question-specific views on stable identities. A user journey, carrying goal and criticality, joins to a service or node along a dashed endpoint-identity arrow. From that service, three dashed arrows fan out to sibling views: a coverage view asking whether it is exercised, a test-placement view asking where it runs, and an execution-policy view that plans for the host. The three sibling views then converge, along dashed arrows, on a joined view labelled not a mega-model. Every join edge is dashed: these are derived correspondences across views, and no fact is copied into a single stored model. No heavy boundary appears — composition is correspondence, not authority. Legend as in Figure C-1; dash and weight carry the meaning without colour. Question: does an important journey have coverage, placement, and policy — all at once? USER JOURNEY goal · criticality endpoint identity SERVICE / NODE stable identity COVERAGE exercised? TEST PLACEMENT where run? EXECUTION POLICY plan_for(host) JOINED VIEW not a mega-model Legend: see Figure C-1. Every join edge is dashed — derived correspondence on stable identities, no copied facts.
Figure C.6-1. Composition by reference. Stable identities join the user-journey, service, coverage, test-placement, and execution-policy views. The resulting joined view supports cross-model queries without duplicating those facts into a single stored model.

Property. The joined view states cross-model properties that no single view can:

The reusable pattern. State the engineering question, select the relevant views, join them on stable identities, and evaluate the cross-view property. The scenario is a traversal across representations, not an additional stored model.

© James C. Davis, 2026–present