Methods and apparatus for representing application dependencies are disclosed. A software application is executed according to an associated state machine. A set of dependencies relationship rules indicates dependencies of a set of software applications upon the software application based upon the state of the software application. The set of dependencies relationship rules may be represented by a dependencies graph, where the software application and the set of software applications are each represented by a dependency node in the dependencies graph and each line connecting the software application with one of the set of software applications corresponds to one or more dependency statements indicating a change in state in one of the set of software applications in response to a change in state of the software application.