Class vs. business class

[Tom_Andries]

I'm working in a document management context, so defining stereotypes for "paper document" and "electronic document" didn't seem such a bad idea.
For the business process, it does matter to see distinction.

However, in EA I could define these stereotypes based on class and on business class.

How does EA makes up the difference between a class and a business class? What's the "internal" criteria for that, or where does one set it?

Thx!

Tom

[thomaskilian]

Business classes are used in the domain model. They are more abstract than "real" classes. I stereotype them according to MVC as entity, boundary and control.

[Tom_Andries]

Thomas,

I do understand what they are used for. My problem is, how does EA figures out whether I'm using a business class or a "sofware" class?

For when introducing new stereotypes, one has either to choose, either to define the stereotype on both classes (which are pretty much, stereotypes by themselves alread -:)

By the way, I do use the boundary-control-entity stuff only on software analysis. Obviously, any system  description, including business systems, could be described that way. For a number of reasons, I prefer classical business modeling the depict businesses, with use cases in support of processes, leading to the MVC view in functional analysis. All this with a pretty much component based mind set.
For the latter delivers sound and universal organisation principles one can weave throughout the whole study from business to operations.

[thomaskilian]

I do understand what they are used for. My problem is, how does EA figures out whether I'm using a business class or a "sofware" class?

AFAIK there is no real distinction between both in EA. If you apply stereotypes,  you can qualify Class and Business Class. So it simply depends on what stereotype you choose. In Config/UML/Stereotypes you can find stereotypes for Business Classes and can add new ones. In the class properties you can assign them using the ellipsis right hand of the stereotype drop down.