Messages

1

General Board / Re: Shape script control by external switch

« on: November 12, 2018, 05:56:08 pm »

If you're wanting to change that notation for all elements on the diagram, I would be creating customized diagram types, then checking diagram.mdgtype within your shape scripts. This means the modeler has the choice of whether the extra notation is shown or not.

Yeah thats a good idea too.

2

Bugs and Issues / Re: Archimate 3: Cannot Create an assignment between a device and a system software

« on: November 12, 2018, 05:50:12 pm »

Yes there were problems with the relationships in the ArchiMate V3.0 spec. Probably because they tried to define the metamodel without a tool - sigh  . I suspect the authors of the spec ended up having mental fatigue defining the relationship tables and ended up publishing V3.0 without the necessary vigour they should have done. But hey they are human and everyone has bad days.

However after publishing I understand that there were some articles pointing out those errors by Gerben Wierda and a few others lead to V3.01 of the ArchiMate Spec which addressed most of those issues. Not saying they got it perfect mind.

So I guess the question is does the ArchiMate MDG take into account those changes in V3.01. I suspect perhaps not given this thread.
The simple solution would be to revise the ArchMate MDG to comply with V3.01 then things might work a little better.

3

General Board / Re: Customer Journeys in EA

« on: November 11, 2018, 01:52:46 pm »

...
Hi Sunshine,  for Value Chain, do you merely mean "chains of business function/processes"?  There is no occurrence of the term "Value Chain" in the ArchiMate 3.0 spec.  We're looking at implementing Porter-style Value Chains in out MDG, so I'm interested in others' experiences.

The existing EA "Value Chain" mechanism, is a starting point but needs some conceptual "jiggering" to make it work correctly with other elements.

Paolo

Good question. Over the years I've implemented value chains using archimate in various forms.
Initially I used functions and processes. Recently in the last year or so I've added value stream to my MDG and used those to in conjunction with business capabilities to create value chains based on blog from Marc Lankhorst, Henk Jonkers and Adina Aldea at BizzDesign
https://bizzdesign.com/blog/why-adding-a-value-stream-element-to-archimate-is-key/
There is another blog about value mapping
https://bizzdesign.com/blog/archimate-3-0-and-value-mapping/
Still experimenting with it at present to see if it all makes sense to the business folk.
A little while ago I imported the APQC v7.1 model but ended up creating two new element types to try and match their terminology of Category, Group, process, Activity and Task at the various levels. I mapped Process to ArchiMate and Activity and Task to BPMN elements.
Using the APQC framework to model the whole enterprise. Replaced some of the unique specialised stuff with what my organisation does from our operations manual and it seems to be hanging together although its a lot of work and still not finished.
Not sure if there is a right answer for all of this.
I'd be interested in what you are doing.
Happy to share the APQC model but its mapped to my EA MDG and you would have to translate it to your MDG. Easy enough with a script or SQL statement

4

Bugs and Issues / Re: Archimate 3: Cannot Create an assignment between a device and a system software

« on: November 09, 2018, 05:37:14 am »

My Version is 14.1.1427

You could download an earlier version and use that instead or alternatively use Archimate 2

5

General Board / Re: Shape script control by external switch

« on: November 09, 2018, 05:34:47 am »

You could use diagram stereotype. In the shape script you can check if the diagram stereotype is set to certain value and show the bubble otherwise if not don't. Eazy peazy aye?

6

General Board / Re: Customer Journeys in EA

« on: November 09, 2018, 05:31:45 am »

I use ArchiMate value chains, business processes and collaborations etc.
Can use time line graphs to show mood of customer - happy, sad etc
There are examples of similar approaches using ArchiMate for customer journeys
http://www.hosiaisluoma.fi/blog/customer-journey-archimate/
https://bizzdesign.com/blog/archimate-3-0-and-customer-journey-maps/

7

General Board / Re: Enterprise Integration Patterns

« on: November 08, 2018, 01:15:20 pm »

Yeah I stopped sharing my one drive space a little while ago as I re-organised it.
I've copied the EAI MDG based on the book by Grehgor Hope to GitHub so try this location.
https://github.com/EASunshine/Sparx-EA

Hope that works okay. Not used git hub before.

8

Bugs and Issues / Re: Archimate 3: Cannot Create an assignment between a device and a system software

« on: November 08, 2018, 10:48:45 am »

Archimate 3 MDG seems to be broken in build 1427.

In case you are not aware, you can disable the validation by turning off "Strict Connector Syntax" - although keep in mind that this an all or nothing switch.
http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/14.0/user_interface/links.html

Thanks I didn't know that.
One of the benefits of participating in this forum is learning new stuff aye?

9

Bugs and Issues / Re: Archimate 3: Cannot Create an assignment between a device and a system software

« on: November 07, 2018, 08:04:55 pm »

Nah your not missing anything. Its just broken.
Glad I created my own MDG for ArchiMate 

10

General Board / Re: How to stop all this Spam & BOT created messages

« on: November 07, 2018, 07:55:21 pm »

Yep it is getting a bit of a pain isn't it.
I do like the idea of fighting back with rescam but that is for when email addresses are provided.
http://digg.com/2017/re-scam-ai-scammer
Shame its offline whilst they develop phase II
for more info on rescam
https://www.rescam.org/

However think the best course of action is trying to filter them out at registration time.

11

General Board / Re: Security groups and packages

« on: November 02, 2018, 06:16:39 am »

I understand that. I still need to understand how to setup security so that members of group working on one domain can link to assets (Elements, Diagrams) of another domain.

Right now, security is not enable on our project. Group locking seems to be the way to go first. We are currently setting up our installation to be able to experiment.

Thanks all for your feedback!

My previous post covers that.

12

General Board / Re: Security groups and packages

« on: November 01, 2018, 09:01:54 am »

We have similiar need so how we set up our groups is via a kind of matrix
For example we have different levels or privilege depending upon skill level with EA. For example

• Beginner
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Administrator

Where Beginner can do the basics and Administrator can do everything with the others incrementally having more privileges as their skill level improves. This helps prevent beginners having too much privileges beyond their skill level and messing things up. For example doing a CSV import.

The other security groups we have don't provide any privileges but are allow write privileges to certain areas of the model.
For example

• Business Analyst
• Architect
• Database Designer
• Tester
• etc...

And we use these groups to lock packages with group locks to only allow people assigned to those roles to edit those areas in the model.
By allocating the users to a role group and a privilege group they are given the appropriate access to the things they are allowed to do and the area's of their domain.
For example a junior business analyst would be assigned to "Beginner" and "Business Analyst"
Seems to work okay for the team of 15 or so.

13

General Board / Re: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server - [DBDNETLIB] ConnectionWrite(send())

« on: October 31, 2018, 01:55:03 pm »

Ahh network errors don't you hate them.
I also use EA V14.1 B1427 with SQL Server 2012 over our network and use Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server to connect to the SQL server but don't get network errors.

Given you've moved the database to your local machine and still get an error its kind of puzzling as the connection shouldn't go over the network anymore.

The only things that come to mind and worth investigation are;

• May be just double check you are actually accessing the local one and not the one on the server across the network.
• Not sure about this but perhaps the "OLE DB provider for SQL connector" resolves names using the DNS server to resolve IP address. Have a look at setting up an IP address to resolve server name in c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
• Do you use a  Sparx EA license server on the network? May be its that. Don't think it will as I'm pretty sure it only connects to that during start up of Sparx EA. You could  try a node locked licence to isolate

Well that's all I can think of.
Do let us know how you get on.

14

General Board / Re: Setting up Cross References from Element to Diagram

« on: October 31, 2018, 07:48:52 am »

And yet in the manual for V14 it says it is
https://sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/14.0/modeling_tools/crossreferences.html

In the Project Browser, right-click on the target element or diagram (the object of the cross reference) and select:

• 'Add Custom Reference' (for a target diagram)
• 'Add | Add Custom Reference' (for a target element)
  

The 'Set up references' dialog displays.

So perhaps thats a remnant from V12 manual.
Wonder why they took it out of V14 ?

15

General Board / Re: Nesting of Elements - ArchiMate, Relationships, Visual Purposes

« on: October 31, 2018, 07:39:03 am »

The ArchiMate standard allows for determining 4 types of Relationships when it comes to nesting elements.

It appears that Sparx handles nesting in two ways that I am aware of:
1. Logically moving the element "within/under" the containing element
2. Create a Traceability of an owns/owned by between the two elements

The question is in support of ArchiMate, is there a method/approach that I am unaware of that allows you to:
1. Specify one of the 4 Relationship types (composition, aggregation, assignment, realization) as part of the nesting process
2. Just reflect the visual purposes of nesting without logically moving the element "within/under" the containing element

Everything that Geert says is true and as I've been using Sparx EA with ArchiMate for just over a decade now I'd like to add something too.

Section 5.1 in ArchiMate Specification V3.01 can be a little confusing. It does make a point in section 5.1 of the ArchiMate specification;

Note, however, that this can lead to ambiguous models, in case multiple structural relationships
are allowed between these elements

So that's a kind of "Here be Dragons" warning.

In addition to the specification if you read "Enterprise Architecture At Work" by Marc Lanckhorst et al the book describes it a little bit more detail in section 5.13 and from that this is how I've interpreted how to nest and use relationships you talk about.

As Sparx EA only allows one parent in nesting the model elements the way I've interpreted that the nesting is for diagramming purposes only to show some things being grouped together. The structure of the model elements can be nested but I would only use composition to represent that as the definition of composition in ArchiMate says

The composition relationship has been inspired by the composition relationship in UML class diagrams. In contrast to the aggregation relationship, the composed concept can be part of only one composition.

Which I take to mean, if you destroy the parent the children are also destroyed with it. i.e. the same as UML.

I interpret the other three relationships aggregation, assignment and realisation as being weaker relationships similar to association as the child elements can exist outside the lifecycle of the parent. Which seems to fall into line with the definitions for those in ArchiMate below;

Code: [Select]

Aggregation Relationship
The aggregation relationship has been inspired by the aggregation relationship in UML class diagrams. In contrast to the composition relationship, an object can be part of more than one aggregation.
Assignment Relationship
The assignment relationship links active structure elements with units of behaviour that are performed by them, business actors with business roles that are fulfilled by them, and nodes with technology objects. It can, for example, relate an internal active structure element with an internal behaviour element, an interface with a service, or a node with a technology object
Realisation Relationship
The realization relationship indicates that more abstract entities (“what” or “logical”) are realized by means of more tangible entities (“how” or “physical”). The realization relationship is used to model run-time realization; for example, that a business process realizes a business service, and that a data object realizes a business object, an artifact realizes an application component, or a core element realizes a motivation element.

Hope that helps.