Derived Relationships?

[Thelonius]

This topic does not appear to have been discussed before (I searched).

Does anyone know if Sparx has any future intent to implement "Derived Relationships" in any meaningful way?

E.g., select any object and Sparx will show you the complete end-to-end, upstream and downstream chain of related objects.

("Insert Related Elements" is not the same thing.)

I need to check the Biner EASI plug-in to see if and how it does DR, but I imagine it would only do it for ArchiMate concepts.

It doesn't actually sound like it would be too hard to implement, but what do I know?

Does anyone have a view as to how difficult this would be?

Has anyone written a script to do it?

One wonders.

[RoyC]

Does the Traceability window (Ctrl+Shift+4) not help you?

[Thelonius]

Hi Roy

Thanks for responding.

The Traceability window is - in theory - related to what I would really like to see, but only just. :-)

If the Traceability window let me pick TWO objects in the model to see if there is a dependency between them - that would be more like what I'm looking for. Also, rather than a folder view, if the objects and relationships between those TWO objects could be displayed on a new diagram graphically, that would also be more desireable. :-)

Using the Traceability window, I find that I must spend a lot of time manually clicking on arrows to drill down to see the lower layers and objects and relationships in those lower layers. It would be of great value if there was a check box selection that would "show all layers" - automatically unfolding the entire hierarchy graphically (so that I didn't have to do it).

Also, "derived relationships" in UML implies "inheritance". Which isn't what I'm interested in.

The definition of "derived relationship" I have in mind is the idea from ArchiMate, which says: "If I pick any two objects in the model, can the tool show me all of the explicit relationships between those two objects  that I have defined - OR - any 'derived' relationships that I may not have explicitly modelled but which are implied by other relationships."

We have colleagues doing fine-grained technical design architecture diagrams (and lots of them) who wish to confirm the end-to-end, top-to-bottom intervening relationships of "this thing" and "that thing"

Useful. But not something Sparx has on the roadmap, I surmise.

Thanks
Jon

[Graham_Moir]

I agree with Thelonius.  I do find the Traceability window useful, but am often irritated that I can't get that visual information reported anywhere.  

I can also see major benefits to the suggestion of selecting a couple of  elements and the end to end traceability between them being presented back.  

[rothnic]

Also in agreement.

It is good to understand and visualize relationships that may not have a way to visualize formally. For example, if a UseCase has a nested Activity, there is a relationship there, that I'm not sure you can currently visualize on a diagram, but could be useful for analysis.

MagicDraw's Analysis diagram and filtering/chaining tool is what I'd consider ideal. Visual Paradigm has a similar tool that allows you to right click an element and select analysis, and it will auto generate a diagram with all the relationships.

[steen.jensen]

by Beasi plugg-in or use Archi (Export Archimate model in OpenExchaange format)  then you can look att whar Derived Relationships there with no cost, just some  time (Opex)