Patent ID: 7949994

Claim:
A method of incrementally visualizing graphical extensible models for legacy software applications via a user interface comprising: displaying direct connections for relationships between top level artifacts in a top level diagram of a graphical extensible model; providing expansion icons for the top level artifacts that contain lower level artifacts, wherein the expansion icons for the top level artifacts containing lower level artifacts may be selected to drill down to the lower level artifacts; scanning the lower level artifacts to determine inferred relationships between the top level artifacts and other top level artifacts, wherein the other top level artifacts are different from the top level artifacts; displaying direct connections for the inferred relationships between the top level artifacts and the other top level artifacts in the top level diagram, without having to select the expansion icons; displaying direct connections for relationships between the lower level artifacts in a lower level diagram of the graphical extensible model, wherein displaying the direct connections in the lower level diagram is in response to the expansion icons being selected for the top level artifacts containing the lower level artifacts; displaying the top level artifacts with the lower level artifacts in response to the expansion icons being selected; and updating source and target endpoints of the inferred relationships between the top level artifacts and the other top level artifacts, in response to the expansion icons being selected, so that the source or target endpoints point to the lower level artifacts in which the inferred relationships are computed from.