Please note : This help page is not for the latest version of Enterprise Architect. The latest help can be found here.

Introduction

Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems is a comprehensive analysis, modeling, design, construction, testing and management tool that covers all aspects of software, business, systems and enterprise modeling and design. Enterprise Architect can be used from requirements gathering through analysis, design, construction, build, debug, simulation, testing, change management and maintenance to implementation. As an integrated model it includes full traceability between all tasks, phases, domains, components and lifecycle management.

Enterprise Architect combines the power of the UML specification (and derivative modeling languages such as BPMN and SysML), with a high performance, intuitive interface, to bring an integrated and advanced toolset to the whole development team.

A scalable, multi-user, visual platform with a rich feature set, Enterprise Architect helps you to build and document robust, maintainable systems and processes. As a proven, highly popular tool for analysts, developers, consultants and managers in over 150 countries world-wide, it is used in the development of many kinds of applications, processes, workflows, database schema, knowledge bases, organizational architectures, systems and technology standards in a wide range of industries and domains.

Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect also includes detailed support for architectural frameworks such as TOGAF, UPDM, Archimate, Zachman Framework and others, providing seamless modeling and design capabilities from early strategic modeling right through requirements to application lifecycle management, impact analysis, architectural design and future state modeling.

Industries supported include aerospace, banking, web development, engineering, finance, medicine, military, research, academia, transport, retail, utilities and electrical engineering. Enterprise Architect also has a long history of being used by standards organizations worldwide to structure and organize their domain specific knowledge, common models and message specifications.

Enterprise Architect is supported by many partners, consultants, colleges and other organizations that provide training and consulting services based on the system. Details on partners and local trainers can be found at the Sparx Systems web site (www.sparxsystems.com).

A Review of the Topics Covered in the Help System

Feature Area	Description
Getting Started	Introductory material including how to set up your Enterprise Architect environment. This section includes a detailed review of the user interface and the windows, toolbars and other devices that provide the rich and efficient toolset that has made Enterprise Architect a market leader in UML Based modeling and design. A short tutorial section is also provided, which goes over the basic modeling tasks such as building a Package structure, adding elements and drawing diagrams.
Introduction (this section)	Describes how to install and run Enterprise Architect, and provides a brief overview of capabilities. Explains where to buy Enterprise Architect and includes legal and formal statements with respect to copyright and licensing.
Repositories, Projects and Teams	Learn about the modeling environment that accelerates and integrates Software, Business and Systems development. Understand the basic types of repository that can be used to host models, from local files through to Cloud based solutions. Understand how teams can collaborate and share models and design tasks. Also introduces the Re-usable Asset Service, which is a Cloud based service that provides access to re-usable components and technologies. Some introductory material is also offered on Project Management within the Enterprise Architect platform, as well as topics on Testing and Maintenance.
Modeling Fundamentals	Includes a wealth of information on the Enterprise Architect modeling environment and how best to express your design ideas. Introduces the basic concepts of models, Packages, elements, connectors and diagrams.
Navigating and Searching	Learn about the tools and capabilities within Enterprise Architect for navigating within a model, searching a repository for specific information and tracing between various elements within the model.
UML Models	A review of the basic UML modeling language, its elements and the main diagrams that are used to model and design solutions. UML is an industry standard modeling language that has a proven track record and many years of development and refinement in its history. As well as the core UML, Enterprise Architect also supports a number of derivative modeling languages that use UML to provide a rich and exact visual modeling tool suite. For example SysML and BPMN are realized in Enterprise Architect as official extensions to the core UML language.
Requirements	Enterprise Architect is an extremely powerful Requirements Management tool that in addition to the common capabilities generally offered by such tools, includes more advanced options to provide complete traceability from strategic modeling to implementation, architectural definition, deployment and maintenance. Cloud based repositories, discussions, impact analysis tools, reporting and a host of other capabilities make Enterprise Architect the ideal platform for storing and working with requirements. The Specification Manager is a document-like interface that provides an easy and familiar environment for creating and editing requirements without needing to use diagramming or visual tools.
Business Modeling	Powerful tools for business modeling including BPMN, Simulation, BPEL, Requirements, Use Cases, Structured Scenarios and more.
Software Engineering	Discover the comprehensive development toolset, integrated with the modeling environment for Software and Database designing and coding. Code engineering encompasses automated code generation, reverse engineering of source code and synchronization between the source code and model. Enterprise Architect supports code engineering for more than ten programming languages out of the box!
Systems Engineering	Integrating many high-end features for systems engineers, the Ultimate and Systems Engineering editions of Enterprise Architect provide SysML modeling and parametric model simulation for an engineering analysis of critical system parameters, including the evaluation of key metrics such as performance, reliability and other physical characteristics; As well as executable code generation, and model-to-code transformations for Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) and ADA 2005.
Enterprise Architecture	Enterprise Architect supports industry-standard architectural frameworks to facilitate enterprise modeling. Framework implementations are based on the UML and its related specifications, which maximizes architectural rigor and allows users to exchange enterprise model information using standards such as XMI. Define your enterprise with built in tools and add-in frameworks such as TOGAF, Zachman Framework, UPDM, ArchiMate and more.
Database Design and Construction	Enterprise Architect includes a powerful Database designer, a profile for working with database tables and schema, visual tools for modeling diagrams and tools for importing database structures and comparing existing structures to models. Integrating data models into the overall enterprise model provides a rich set of information and meta data that can be linked and traced through various aspects of the model to show how change may impact remote systems or processes.
Schema Engineering	Structural models in Enterprise Architect are frequently used to define the meta-models of domains of interest. An important part of realizing the benefit of these models is in the definition of schema (often XSD based). The Schema Composer in Enterprise Architect helps to make maximum advantage of such models by streamlining the conversion of model information into schemas that comply with the naming standards and format of a variety of popular industry meta-models. In addition to the new Schema Composer, Enterprise Architect also supports the modeling of XSD and WSDL definitions using UML Profiles that support explicit modeling of the relevant types. You can model and develop a complete Service Oriented Architecture in Enterprise Architect, using XSD or WSDL, or also SoaML and SOMF. Additional topics included in this section are devoted to MOF (the Meta Object Facility), ODM and NIEM - Enterprise Architect includes many features for modeling and working with NIEM domains and schema.
Geospatial Design	As a standards-based modeling environment, Enterprise Architect empowers geospatial domain experts through the use of ArcGIS and GML tools and profiles. These tools and profiles allow you to visualize geospatial database design using UML, communicate designs to enterprise stakeholders, link geodatabase designs directly to enterprise and system models and requirements and trace from corporate strategy to realization by critical GIS components.
Model Transformation	Model Driven Architecture (MDA) Transformations provide a fully configurable way of converting model elements and model fragments from one domain to another. This typically involves converting Platform-Independent Model (PIM) elements to Platform-Specific Model (PSM) elements. A single element from the PIM can be responsible for creating multiple PSM elements across multiple domains. Transform your elements with built-in transformations or write your own transformation templates.
Execution Analysis and Simulation	Understand your code base by visually analyzing running code and performing simulations. Use test points, profiling, automated diagram generation.
Reporting	Generate high quality documentation in PDF, RTF, DocX and HTML formats. With an extremely powerful template driven report generation capability, Enterprise Architect is the pre-eminent tool for producing quality documentation in a variety of formats that help to extend the reach and usefulness of models designed and built in Enterprise Architect.
Project Management	Estimate project size, measure risk and effort. Connect the Project Manager and development team, allowing for up-to-the-minute reporting and assessment of how a project is developing. Assign resources and track to completion via views and charts. Assess the relative complexity of a software project.
Testing and Quality Assurance	Define test specifications, execute tests and record results directly from model elements. Keeping model elements and testing documentation in one integrated model can significantly improve the communication between quality assurance teams, software developers, analysts and architects. Explore the facilities for testing and validating your model structure and content.
Maintenance	Model validation, Testing, Maintenance, Changes and Issues.
Automation & Scripting	Extend the power of Enterprise Architect to create your own domain specific Add-Ins, scripts and functionality.
Extending UML	How Basic UML and open standards are extended in Enterprise Architect's support of other modeling languages, and how you can use UML Profiles, MDG Technologies and SDK to create your own modeling languages.