The three Balance commands (Balance Parent, Balance Child(ren), and Balance Horizontal) invoke the System Architect balancing algorithms. Balance violations, as well as rule violations that prevent proper balancing, are checked during execution of these commands. The diagram being checked is annotated with error indicators. Multiple errors are indicated with an asterisk. The Clear Errors Command command removes the error indicators from the diagram after you are done inspecting them.

Horizontal balancing is done to ensure that the data entering data stores, AND connectors, and XOR connectors also leaves those objects. The concept of horizontal balancing is not appropriate for processes, in which the data is transformed; different data leaves a process than enters it.

The Balance Horizontal command performs three balancing checks. To run the Balance Horizontal report, select one symbol of these types, pull down the Reports Menu and select the Balance Horizontal command.

The data flows entering a connector are balanced against the data flows coming out at the element level. The system tests for the conservation of data rule: everything going into a connector has to come out, and everything coming out has to have gone in.

Each data store needs to be entered in the data dictionary, and it needs to be defined in terms of structures and elements. Any data flow coming into the data store is checked to ensure that all structures and elements it carries are contained somewhere in the data store definition (incoming elements have to have a place to park). Similarly, any data flow leaving the data store has its structures and elements checked for matches in the data store definition (outgoing elements must come from somewhere).