Best Practice: Business Model to Technical Model

[Rouven]

Hello everyone,

I am currently looking for best practices regarding models targeting different environments. Roughly the scenario I'm looking at is a domain model for the business perspective (UML class model) and a more detailed domain model for the technical perspective.
The minimum requirement is that the technical model is identical with the business model except the technical model contains more attributes.
On top of that it would be nice if it was possible to have different cardinalities on the technical model than on the business model (e.g. 0..1 on the business and 0..* on the technical model).
And ideally I would not have to derive the model manually (i.e. sort of a defined model-2-model transformation) but could work on both models in parallel.

Does anyone have any experience achieving this with Enterprise Architect?

Thanks for your input!
Regards,
Rouven

[OpenIT Solutions]

I guess in Sparx you have several options - you could just use plain UML and have the elements of your technical model extend the elements of your business model. Or you could create your business model then export it to a separate model and start building your technical model from it - this way you can use model / diagram (v9.2+) comparison features to highlight the differences between the two.

Regards,

Jon.

[Rouven]

Hi Jon,

thanks for your input.

I'm not a fan of the export/import solution because I'm afraid the models are totally detached and in no way traceable (except for the name).

The extensions/subclassing are an approach I also thought about that I guess could work. However it would need some additional scripting/transformation logic if there are standard transformations, e.g. "whenever someone introduce a class with stereotype X in the model I need a specialization of X in the technical model with the following attributes". This extension mechanism solves the traceability, which is a good thing.

Anybody have any further ideas?

Regards,
Rouven

[qwerty]

I guess Jon's suggestion is not the worst. Traceability is kept as all elements keep their GUID throughout ex-/import. I think there's not much alternative. I wouldn't take the transformation path since EA is doing a lot of very strange things in their guts to link transformed elements to each other.

q.

[Sunshine]

Sounds like you may like to consider the transformation capability in enterprise architect. Create a platform independent model (PIM) then transform it using a DDL transformation into a technical or platform specific model (PSM). Has the benefits of being able to change to PIM and transforming to PSM again. I think the transformation mechanism has some synching ability so if you add things to PSM they are preserved.
It has the advantages of being customizable so you change it if you like.
Hope that sows some seeds of an idea for you.