How to model physical sites and locations

[micdev42]

Does EA have a standard way of modelling physical sites and locations, ideally using UML?
I'm currently using stereotyped nodes:
Location = <<Geography>> Node
Site = <<Site>> Node

It's not ideal.
Also, how about network links between sites - how should they be modelled?

Thanks
Michael

[«Midnight»]

Actually, you should probably be asking if UML has a standard way.

AFAIK UML only goes part way. UML provides you the means to do so though deployment and perhaps component diagrams. The rest is up to you.

These are things that are highly subject to personal or corporate practice, so are difficult to standardize. That doesn't mean that such a standard won't show up in the future, but it could be a while.

EA follows this philosophy. It supports UML, but leaves you to take it further, on either a personal or corporate level.

However, EA gives you some powerful assistance. You can define your own stereotypes, perhaps something like your «geography» and «site» ideas. You can add these to EA's list of recognized stereotypes (via the Stereotypes tab of the Settings | UML dialog). You can assign specific graphics to these. Or you can define how they are drawn with shape scripts, which can in turn detect tagged values and adjust the drawing accordingly. You can if you wish package these in a profile, and perhaps even go to the extent of developing an MDG technology complete with transformation scripts and more.

Still, the choice is left to you.

HTH, David

[JPHespanha]

Michael:

This is the sort of thing I want to (at least partially) solve with my research on a UML Profile based on the Simple Features Access for SQL.

There are indeed a number of standards to use, from the more generic ISO19000 series standards to more specific and happily simpler ones.

One example is the Simple Features, which is based on the Geographic Markup Language (GML) from the Open GIS Consortium.

The GML is by its turn based on the ISO19000 series.

Currently, most databases supporting geometry types are following the SQL/MM standard, which for the spatial part is in close agreement with the Simple Features.

My profile will be specifically suited to the open source PostGIS extension to PostgreSQL database. So, it will be already a PSM, or plataform specific model. But with little effort, I guess it could apply to other spatial databases as well.

Another (very interesting) possibility is to build a truly object-oriented application model from the UML. I am also considering this trend in my research; this would be implemented into Eclipse EMF platform and/or using Hibernate (always with the Java programming language as basis).

I searched a lot for such an UML Profile and do not find anything really usefull for my research, but the closer match was from the Italian Intesa GIS project, through GeoUML. Even so, does not supply an UML Profile, just a definition of geometry types and topology, based on ISO standards.

There were also a number of other spatial profiles using UML in related research, prototypes and even production models, but they did not follow ISO, OGC and SQL standards.

Finally, network features do exist in GIS (even on open source ones like PostGIS), but they are not considered 'Simple Features', and as such will be left outside the UML Profile.

Spatial Networks would justify a new UML Profile