Best practice on XMI-import of ARIS models

[ch@SVDO]

Hi,
has anyone already tried and succeeded in importing event-driven process chains that were modeled in ARIS?
I got some XMI exports (and the corresponding ARIS-Export.dtd) from the responsible ARIS modeler but EA cannot import this XMI file. The following error message occurs: "Unknown XMI exporter or version".

Header of ARIS-Export.dtd:  
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Header of process.XMI:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE AML SYSTEM "ARIS-Export.dtd">

Does anyone have a clue why EA cannot import the file?

Thanks,
Charly

[thomaskilian]

Hi,
I have written an importer in Perl which converts EPC into Activity (diagrams). Works quite nice. But of course there are some trap doors as you can not relate UML and ARIS 1:1.

[ch@SVDO]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I know about the EPC vs. UML issue. Knowing that one can also create UML diagrams in ARIS, I explicitly requested a XMI-export from the process people, representing an UML activity diagram. However, when I try importing this XMI file I get the same error message (as described in my first post) again.

[thomaskilian]

XMI is not XMI I guess you will have to import via XMI parser and EA API.

[Jan Pacovsky]

I asked here in discussions for an importer of EPCs into EA, a few weeks ago. Does it really work and what are limitations of your importer?

[thomaskilian]

Jan,
I did a rather simple import. The first pass imports all ARIS process into Activities, other elements into Actors and Components respectively. Some attributes are mapped "logically" (like comments) a few others are move to Tags. The next pass converts ARIS events into Information-/ControlFlows (depending on what is connected). If there is nothing outgoing from an ARIS event I create a StateEnd (don't remember the exact metaclass as I type from "far off"). So all Activities are connected via named relations. The last pass converts the ARIS models into Activity Diagrams (using an 1:5 aspect ratio). Now just a little manual afterwork is necessary for the diagrams (e.g. remove the Actors as they clutter the diagrams and things like that). It took me 2 days to write the converter, so you can not expect wonders. But at least you have all the ARIS stuff in EA. And as it keeps the ARIS GUIDs it would be possible to even synch the models (which I currently don't).

[Jan Pacovsky]

Could you share your scripts with me, please? We're starting a project where ARIS is a must. As EA is much better in later project phases, it would be great to have a way how to convert stuff from ARIS to EA.

[thomaskilian]

Hi Jan,
this was a development for my customer, so I can't give it away. But I can give you some tips: there is a Perl XMI parser which can be used (use XML::Parser;). It creates an array of hashes. This array is structured very obvious. I use a class that sucks in everything in a recursive object structure. That allows to use XML elements like

$mo->{ATTRDEF}->{AT_NAME}->{AttrValue}->{NAME}

(you will likewise find these attributes inside the ARIS XMI).

[Jan Pacovsky]

Ok. I understand. Thank you anyway for hints. :-) We'll try it.