EA model of a product with multiple clients

[etaha]

Hi,
Hope this is the best location to ask such question.
Generally, what are the best approach to manage EA model for a product that have multiple client and each client has different set of customization?
Each client has their own customization and set of features that may or may not interfere with other clients needs.
How to keep artifacts in sync for product level and client level model?
I know it's big question and posting it to see how experts resolve such problem in EA.
Thanks in Advance

[PeterHeintz]

Hi etaha,
I think you have answered you question yourself. This issue is just too complex ("big question"), to have a "best approach".
Basically I believe it is mainly not a EA question at all.

It is more the question how you manage different things, having much in common.
The UML languages and existing language profile provide some language features to support that. Further on the OMG is defining some additional languages to better support that issue.

There also a commercial EA plugging intended to address that issue and, last but not least EA features like version control, time aware modelling, reusable assets, model to model transformation could help you to solve you issue.

But there is no best practice at all.

[PeterHeintz]

Referring to your kind of behaviour, I assume that you had a bad day today.

You could use version control and check out the same content or different content to different SQL servers published via EA Cloud. The question is, if your clients only read or also write via EA cloud.
Regarding time aware modelling maturity you might be right.

With reusable assets it is quite the same as with version control mentioned above, and again you can deploy reusable assets do many different SQL Servers published in an EA cloud
What I listed was as mentioned before not your solution but features that might help to find your solution.

Regarding model transformation just follow the links below to see for what model transformations are used in those scenarios.

http://incose.ch/sites/default/files/page_images/SWISSED17_Final_presentation_19.pdf
https://www.pure-systems.com/products/pure-variants-for-enterprise-architect-286.html

PS: If you expect help in this forum you should be a bit more concrete and a bit more friendliness could be beneficial.

[etaha]

Hi Peter,
Thanks a lot for your reply and help.
I didn't mean anything by my reply, I've removed it anyways. What I mean by my reply is only to mention that I have had a lot of issues with this and couldn't figure out the best practices to this. I'm really sorry if my words aren't showing the intention.

Your replies and notes are so appreciated and respected.
Best Personal Regards.

[qwerty]

Your wording was indeed a bit misleading. However, you are asking a very complex question. There are so many constraints that need to be taken into consideration, that you can not expect a good answer. This is stuff for a couple of long workshops - and possible a consultant that's used to configure EA. There's not much left besides what already has been mentioned. You can consider a mix of version control, partial XMI exports and a smart way to merge external work. Eventually look into LemonTree from LieberLieber. I have not used it, but it seems to be worth a look. Finally, there are quite a number of threads here on the forum that are similar to what you are asking. But finding them is a bit of a PITA.

q.

[etaha]

Appreciated and I would like to thank you all for your detailed reply and continues support...
I'll explore mentioned ideas and search for similar posts.
Thanks.

[Dermot]

For a summary of those options you can try the Deployment whitepaper:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/downloads/whitepapers/EA_Deployment.pdf

[etaha]

As per my understanding of Deployment whitepaper, Version Control deployment and EA cloud deployment are mutually exclusive.
However, as Peter mentioned, there's a way to use them both in some cases. EA Cloud deployment currently is in use in our case with different multi-site read/write access. Is using version control possible in such case?
Thank you all.