Patent ID: 8027956

Claim:
A method for modeling a transformation of a system, comprising: receiving, by an apparatus having a transformation engine associated with a data repository and one or more user interfaces, a plurality of desired states for a transformation of a system; developing, by the transformation engine, a plurality of state data structures, wherein each state data structure represents the system at a time corresponding to a desired state based on the transformation, wherein each state data structure comprises a first set of data structures, wherein each of the first set of data structures associated with a desired state represents an entity or relationship of the system at the corresponding time; storing the plurality of state data structures in the data repository; forming a transformation scenario to represent the transformation of the system, wherein the transformation scenario is a data structure comprising the plurality of state data structures, by: associating the plurality of state data structures; ordering the plurality of state data structures based on the times corresponding to each of the plurality of state data structures; and associating a first data structure in the first set of data structures of a first state data structure of the plurality of state data structures with a second data structure in the first set of data structures of a second state data structure of the plurality of state data structures using a correlating identity (CID), where the first state data structure represents the system at a first corresponding time, the second state data structure represents the system at a second corresponding time, the first state data structure represents a first entity or relationship of the system at the first corresponding time and the second state data structure represents the first entity or relationship of the system at the second corresponding time; and storing the transformation scenario in the data repository, wherein the plurality of state data structures includes a data structure representing the system in a desired final configuration, wherein the transformation of the system is based on the scenario.