Feature Focus: Analysis Snapshot Comparison

Understand the present of your applications by looking through the lens of the past. CAST Highlight now allows users to compare key metrics and KPIs between different analysis snapshots of a scanned application. See how to use the feature in this article.

How to compare analysis snapshots of an application

In some cases, monitoring the evolution of a metric alone is not enough to understand the possible underlying changes causing a score change. For example, you may notice the Software Resiliency score decreasing in the latest scan and not realize the reason is due to a significant decrease in the number of lines of code. Another example could be an Open Source Safety score decreasing after you recently upgraded components to safer versions when you expected the Open Source Safety score to increase. You may have missed that the reason is that both the Obsolescence and License scores decreased in the latest scan. The analysis snapshot comparison feature is here to support this kind of fine-grained trend analysis at the application level.
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To compare metrics across multiple application snapshots, click on “Compare” while viewing an application. It opens a modal with two snapshot selectors and the list of metrics available.
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Select your snapshots to populate the metric list with values. The change between both analysis snapshots is automatically calculated for each metric. For better trend readability, we recommend you to select the older snapshot as snapshot #1, the newer as snapshot #2.

Note: the “Compare” button will not be displayed if your application has less than two snapshots.

List of comparable metrics

Below is the list of comparable metrics currently available in the feature. It will be progressively expanded to other analysis snapshot data (e.g., differential list of OSS components detected between two scans) in further releases, stay tuned!
Sizing Metrics

  • Business Impact
  • Technical Debt
  • Code Lines
  • Files Count
  • ROAR Index
  • Backfired Function Points

Software Health

  • Software Health
  • Software Resiliency
  • Software Agility
  • Software Elegance

Cloud Maturity

  • Cloud Maturity
  • Cloud Maturity Survey
  • Cloud Maturity Scan
  • Boosters
  • Blockers
  • Roadblocks

Software Composition

  • Open Source Safety
  • License Compliance
  • Component Obsolescence
  • Component Security
  • Vulnerabilities
  • Critical Vulnerabilities
  • High Vulnerabilities
  • Medium Vulnerabilities
  • Low Vulnerabilities
  • Advisory Vulnerabilities

Custom Indicators

  • All custom indicators you may create in your portfolio