Applications and Snapshots

What an application and a snapshot are in CAST Imaging.

Application

In CAST Imaging, an application is the unit of work. It corresponds to one software system — for example, a banking back-end or an e-commerce website. Each application has its own graph in the viewer.

An application is created in AIP Console, where you also deliver the source code and run analyses.

Snapshot

A snapshot is the result of one analysis run. Each time you run a full analysis, CAST produces a new snapshot. A snapshot captures the state of the application at a point in time: all objects, all links, all metrics.

Snapshots are versioned. CAST Imaging can display the current snapshot and let you compare it with previous ones.

Multiple snapshots

When an application has more than one snapshot, you can:

  • See what changed between two versions (added, modified, or removed objects).
  • Track how the complexity of a module changed over time.
  • Verify that a refactoring did not break existing call paths.

See Compare versions and track object history.