JANUS – Analysis and Governance Tool for LabWare LIMS

JANUS creates transparency across evolved LabWare LIMS landscapes and supports the structured assessment of differences, dependencies, and change impacts between development, test, and production environments.

This makes JANUS a practical tool for requirements engineering, impact assessments, migration preparation, release planning, and architecture decisions — especially in environments where configuration states, objects, and customer-specific extensions have evolved over many years.

JANUS system comparison
JANUS Perspectives

JANUS supports analysis, concept work, and governance through multiple perspectives on the system:

  • Package Explorer: analysis of package contents and their relevance for different target environments
  • Objects Explorer: transparency across object states, changes, and responsibilities
  • Pattern Explorer: identification of technical patterns, dependencies, and potential redesign needs
  • Generic Explorer: comparison of arbitrary LabWare object types as a basis for impact assessments and migration analyses
Benefits in the Project Context

Transparency across differences between source and target systems helps to:

  • assess change impacts early and on a sound basis
  • prepare migrations and releases in a more controlled way
  • make business and technical dependencies visible
  • structure redesign and harmonization initiatives more effectively
  • support decisions between business teams, IT, and system administration with solid evidence

JANUS Package Explorer

The Package Explorer supports the structured analysis of LabWare packages and the objects they contain. It helps make not only technical differences visible, but also the business significance of a package in the target system easier to understand.

Define the Analysis Context
Package Explorer Toolbar

In this area, the functional and technical comparison context is defined:

  • Source system: source environment whose state is to be analyzed
  • Target system: target environment against which the state is evaluated
  • Only active: focus on relevant or active packages
  • Package: selection of the package to be assessed as the basis for analysis and decision-making
  • Search button: loading and preparing the comparison data
Structure and Type Overview
Package Explorer Basic Overview

The overview shows which object classes are contained in a package and to what extent. This makes it easier to understand the technical breadth of a package and supports the preparation of reviews, tests, releases, and migrations.

Especially in evolved LIMS environments, this level of condensation is helpful for quickly identifying whether a package mainly affects local adaptations or fundamental system building blocks.

Filter options help focus the analysis on relevant object groups.

Detailed Object Analysis
Package Explorer Object Overview

After selecting an object type, JANUS shows the affected elements in detail and makes it visible whether objects exist only in the source system, only in the target system, or in both systems.

This view supports questions such as:

  • Which objects are relevant for migration or release?
  • Where do unexpected deviations exist between environments?
  • Which differences are business-relevant and which are only technical or administrative?
  • Where is there risk of side effects during installation, redesign, or harmonization?

JANUS Objects Explorer

The Objects Explorer supports the targeted analysis of individual LabWare objects across system boundaries. This makes changes, responsibilities, and time-based development paths transparent.

This perspective is especially useful when incident analyses, release preparations, or migration projects require understanding why certain objects behave differently across environments.

In this way, detailed technical analysis becomes a solid basis for alignment, assessment, and prioritization.

JANUS Pattern Explorer

The Pattern Explorer identifies recurring technical patterns, conventions, and dependencies within a LabWare landscape. This makes it possible not only to analyze concrete findings, but also to recognize structural relationships.

This is helpful when preparing redesigns, assessing technical debt, or making standardization potential visible across multiple objects.

Instead of isolated code fragments, the focus shifts to which architecture and design decisions are active across the landscape — and where adjustment is needed.

JANUS Generic Explorer

The Generic Explorer extends the comparison logic to arbitrary LabWare object types and thereby creates a flexible basis for project-specific questions.

This is especially important in complex or historically evolved systems, because relevant differences often do not only lie in classic development objects, but in configuration, master data, metadata, or customer-specific extensions.

JANUS therefore supports a systematic baseline assessment as a foundation for architecture transparency, migration planning, and governance in complex LabWare landscapes.

Positioning

JANUS is not just a developer tool, but an analysis instrument for evolved LabWare LIMS environments. It translates technical differences into a solid basis for concept work, migration, harmonization, and architecture decisions.

In this way, JANUS supports not only technical work, but above all structured alignment between business teams, system administration, and IT.