Using ArchiMate in Enterprise Architect

Enterprise Architect 11 was released in April 2014.

• Registered Users can login to download the installer.
• Trial users can access a free 30-day trial installer.

1. Download the installer, using one of the links listed above.
2. Double-click the installer file and follow the prompts.
3. The installation process replaces your existing version of Enterprise Architect with version 11.

If you purchased Enterprise Architect within the last 12 months, or renewed your license, you are entitled to download the new version at no additional cost. You login using the user name and password given to you at the time of purchase. If you need to renew your license, or if you have forgotten your user name/password, please contact our sales team via [email protected].

There is no migration process required. Enterprise Architect 11 is backward compatible with the Enterprise Architect 10 models, whether they are hosted in a shared DBMS or in EAP project files.

If you use any new modeling constructs in version 11, such as Chart elements, others who view or edit your model with version 10 will only see a standard element, rather than a rendered Chart. (The model will be preserved though, as long as the Chart stereotype and its tag remain unaltered.)

Yes. Though these are not shown in our video demonstrations, you can read about improvements to HTML generation from the Enterprise Architect 11 release notes.

See our web page that compares Enterprise Architect editions.

Yes. That ID is part of the Requirements name, which you can directly edit in the Specification Manager. You can also control what prefix is used when you create new requirements, using Auto Naming and Auto Counters. See the Enterprise Architect User Guide for details on how to use Auto Naming and Auto Counters.

You can display tagged values for elements that belong to a profile. Use the Type dropdown list to select the Profile's element type. Use the option Limit Display to Selected Type. The tagged values of the chosen element type then become available from the Field Chooser. If you double click a tagged value, Enterprise Architect's Tagged Values window is invoked to enable editing of the tag.

For elements that do not belong to a profile, simply dock the Tagged Values window (View menu | Tagged Values). When you select an element in the Specification Manager, its tags will be displayed.

No. We have a separate add-in for that, MDG Link for DOORS.

Apart from the MDG Link for DOORS mentioned above, there are numerous third-party extensions for Enterprise Architect that integrate with various requirements management and test management tools. These tools are listed on our third-party tools page.

No. This would add the complexity of including elements at multiple points in the hierarchy.

Yes. The third icon from the right contains an item, Print List, that generates a report designed to look similar to the Specification Manager and that sends it to a printer.

Currently, there are no notifications. There are predefined Model Searches for recently discussed elements and a History tab in the Element Discussions window that allow you to view discussions that occurred within a specified time frame. Future versions of Enterprise Architect may provide a dedicated view.

The Element Discussions window has a History tab that lists discussions for all elements during a specified time frame. As mentioned above, you can also use a Model Search to find elements with recent discussions.

Yes. We are, however, considering allowing users of the free Enterprise Architect Lite (read-only) edition to participate in Element Discussions.

No.

Yes.

Yes. You can populate Chart elements based on a specific package, which can be a root node. Make sure you check the option Include Child Packages.

We plan to add this capability. You can already populate charts based on a custom SQL query or a comma separated values (CSV) file. Furthermore, for Time Series charts, you can use a Scheduled Task with cloud-based repositories to automatically update the Chart at daily, weekly or monthly data point intervals. This is shown below.

Scheduled tasks allow you to automatically update Charts with a specific data point interval.

A time series chart that graphs the total number of requirement elements. The chart is generated by a Scheduled Task that is run daily.

As of version 11, Enterprise Architect can connect to a model repository via the http or https protocols. This has not been available in previous versions.

Using http/https allows you to access a model repository without establishing a direct connection to the database on which the model resides. Apart from simplifying access to shared models, this opens up more possibilities for team-based model sharing.

For example, in some corporate environments, team members are not allowed to connect directly to a database - all network communication must be via https. Teams in such environments can now leverage shared models, where an internal cloud hosts Sparx Systems' Cloud Server and the model is accessed from each Enterprise Architect desktop client via https.

There are several benefits, including:

• Simplifying model deployment. Previously, each team member that accessed a model on a DBMS repository would require the database driver to be installed and to have all the connection details for that database. For medium and large teams, the overhead of installing drivers alone could be significant. Now, accessing that same database using the Cloud Server, each team member only needs the URL, model name and user name/password.
• Enhanced performance for remote connections. Accessing and editing models over a WAN is faster when using the Connect To Cloud option, because the connection is optimized to reduce network chatter.
• Support for other team-based modeling tools such as OSLC, RAS and Scheduled Tasks.

The two solutions are complementary and could be combined to good effect. Whereas the Terminal Server / Citrix approach simplifies application deployment, the Cloud Server simplifies model deployment (creating, monitoring, managing and accessing shared models.) For example, if you have a Terminal Server or Citrix Server, you still need each user to establish database connections to every shared model repository. Using a cloud connection would eliminate the need for them to create those direct database connections.

Both solutions address performance in different ways as well. The Terminal Server / Citrix approach will allow high-performance access to shared models, as long as there is a high-speed link between the application server and the DBMS hosting the model repository. A cloud connection will improve performance in situations where the model repository is being accessed, say, over a WAN outside that application server's local environment.

The cloud connection also facilitates Enterprise Architect's new RAS and OSLC capabilities.

When you use the Connect To Cloud feature, you connect to an entire model repository. That includes the model and its meta data (called Reference Data in Enterprise Architect).

Note: By using the new Connect To Cloud option with the Cloud Server, you are not necessarily changing how you store the model, or whether Version Control is applied. Rather, you are changing how the model and its metadata are accessed.

You still need to access the model with the Enterprise Architect application. At this stage, we have not provided a web client to view and edit the model.

There is still a database that hosts the model repository, and this repository is updated via the Enterprise Architect client. Using the cloud connection, however, the Enterprise Architect client no longer directly interfaces with the DBMS. Instead it sends queries via http to a Cloud Server, which then operates on the DBMS that hosts the model repository.

Yes. Sparx Systems makes available the server components you need to do this. We have created a web page that guides you through the process.

We have provided some read-only cloud repositories to allow users to experiment with our Cloud Server components, before establishing their own cloud-hosted model repositories.

The following web page provides three test environments that you can immediately connect to: https://sparxsystems.com/products/procloudserver/try-pcs-online.html.

Apart from these read-only test environments, Sparx Systems does not provide a commercial, cloud-hosted model service.

Enterprise Architect does not impose a specific limit. It would be dependant on what your DBMS server can physically handle.

Yes.

When using the ToC and Cover page templates, the final document is constructed as follows:

1. Cover Page
2. ToC
3. Generated Packages and Elements

No. Currently this is not supported.

You can link .xlsx documents to Artifact elements, similar to what was done for the PDF document in this video demonstration.

Javascript is supported as a target language. The other supported languages are: Java, C, C#, ANSI C++ and System C.

No, but you can reverse engineer sequence diagrams that contain state transitions. For details, see Enterprise Architect's online User Guide under the topic Reporting State Transitions.

Not for state machines. The state machine code engineering feature is designed for forward engineering only.

Enterprise Architect shows you what your application is doing by means of the state machine diagrams, not by displaying lines of generated code. As your application executes and transitions through various states, Enterprise Architect highlights the current state and enabled transitions on the diagram. This is more useful than just showing lines of code that are executing, because you can validate your design against the implementation's run-time behaviour.

The Simulation also lists the output of each Trace statement from the code, so you can track what's going on at the code level that way. (In the demonstration video you can see this info updating in the bottom-right of screen, in the Simulation window).

Yes. If you search the Enterprise Architect User Guide for "build", you'll find information on how to do that. You can also search for "state build" to find how it relates to state machines.

No. The ability to pass, read and write objects only applies to Activity model simulation currently. The BPMN model simulation does not yet support the DataObject and DataStore elements and DataInput/DataOutput associations.

No. You can only debug one process at a time.

It's designed to analyze all dependencies.

The current implementation of OSLC in our server doesn't allow for reading additional information from external sources. It may be possible to create a reference to an Enterprise Architect diagram, but there is no hyperlink protocol outside of Enterprise Architect that supports this.

Most of the recent profile changes we made were shipped with the final Enterprise Architect 10 release, which included support for modeling and generating modular geodatabase schemas.

Version 11 also included some minor enhancements for ArcGIS modeling and we have further enhancements being developed for upcoming point releases.

The following may be of interest in the meantime:
The list of ArcGIS related changes in Enterprise Architect 11:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/ea/11/beta/index.html#arcgis
A webinar that features modeling and generation of modular geodatabase schemas:
http://sparxsystems.com/resources/demos/geospatial/how-to-design-a-geodatabase.html

There are some existing tools that you might find useful. Enterprise Architect's in-place edit facility could speed up your attribute creation scenario.

With an element selected in the diagram you can use the keyboard short-cut Ctrl+Shift+F9 to add an attribute. Then Ctrl+Enter to repeatedly add attributes. With the Notes window docked, you can rapidly create and edit attributes without many mouse clicks.

One of our previous webinars provides a video demonstration of in-place editing, shown at the 18 minute mark.