Eating the IT Elephant: Moving from Greenfield Development to Brownfield

Chapter 6. Abstraction Works Only in a Perfect World

	“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”
	--Pablo Picasso

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Considerations for an Elephant Eater 110

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Systems Integration and Engineering Techniques 112

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Abstraction Is the Heart of Architecture 118

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Do We Need a Grand Unified Tool? 128

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The Connoisseur’s Guide to Eating Elephants 129

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Endnotes 131

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In the first part of the book, we saw how IT systems have grown increasingly larger and more complex over time. This growing complexity is challenging ...