Enterprise Architect (software)

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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect
300px
UML diagram in Enterprise Architect
Developer(s) Sparx Systems
Stable release 12.1 / November 30, 2015; 8 years ago (2015-11-30)
Development status Active
Written in C++
Operating system Microsoft Windows, supports Linux via Wine, Mac OS via CrossOver
Available in English, German, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese , French
Type Software modeling, Software development, Business process modelling
License proprietary
Website www.sparxsystems.com

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is a visual modeling and design tool based on the OMG UML. The platform supports: the design and construction of software systems; modeling business processes; and modeling industry based domains. It is used by businesses and organizations to not only model the architecture of their systems, but to process the implementation of these models across the full application development life-cycle.

Overview

Systems modeling using UML provides a basis for modeling all aspects of organizational architecture, along with the ability to provide a foundation for designing and implementing new systems or changing existing systems. The aspects that can be covered by this type of modeling range from laying out organizational or systems architectures, business process re-engineering, business analysis, and service-oriented architectures and web modeling,[1][2] through to application and database design and re-engineering, and development of embedded systems.[3] Along with system modeling, Enterprise Architect covers the core aspects of the application development life-cycle, from requirements management through to design, construction, testing and maintenance phases, with support for traceability, project management and change control of these processes, as well as, facilities for model driven development of application code using an internal integrated-development platform.

The user base ranges from programmers and business analysts through to enterprise architects, in organizations ranging from small developer companies, multi-national corporations and government organizations through to international industry standards bodies.[4][5][6] Sparx Systems initially released Enterprise Architect in 2000. Originally designed as a UML modeling tool for modeling UML 1.1, the product has evolved to include other OMG UML specifications 1.3, 2.0, 2.1, 2.3, 2.4.1 and 2.5.

Standards

Enterprise Architect supports a range of open industry standards for designing and modeling software and business systems. The following are the core standards supported:

Enterprise Architect also supports industry Frameworks such as:

Enterprise Architect supported Frameworks supplied by industry bodies:

Supports the core service-oriented architectures:

Along with Round Trip engineering of WSDL, XSD used to facilitate BPEL generation.

Standards development

Models published by industry standards development bodies using Enterprise Architect include:

Modeling

File:EA reflection simulation.jpg
Simulation In Enterprise Architect

Underlying UML modeling are several key aspects that most modeling tools support. The core aspects supported by Enterprise Architect include:

UML Validation can be run against the model.[33]

General features

Requirements management

File:Enterprise Architect Requirements whiteboard.jpg
Requirements Management in Whiteboard mode

The common features of Requirements Management supported by Enterprise Architect include customization of how requirements are documented, linking requirements to the design and implementation details, and providing Requirement Traceability through the design and construction phases.[34] These requirements can be subject to change management, workflow processing,[35] baseline comparison and auditing.[36]

Business modeling and analysis

Enterprise Architect supports a number of methods of modeling business processes using UML as the foundation modeling language. The core languages for business modeling and analysis include BPMN and BPEL, with various historic profiles such as the Eriksson-Penker profile.[37] Enterprise Architect also supports the definition of Business Rules with the ability to generate executable code from these rules.[38] Business modeling can be combined with Gap analysis to view potential gaps in proposed solutions.

Simulation

Model simulation of Behavioral diagrams is supported for:[39]

  • State Machines
  • Interaction (Sequence diagrams)
  • Activities
  • BPMN

Execution flow is defined using Triggers, Guards and Effects. The simulation supports re-runs with alteration to the triggered events and supports viewing variables, the call stack and setting debug markers. There is also support for interaction with emulated User-Interface screens containing common UI fields.

System development

In line with the Model Driven design principles Enterprise Architect supports MDA transforms of PIM Class structures to PSM Class structures, Round-trip engineering of code for 10 software languages and several key embedded HDL systems languages (Ada, VHDL and Verilog). It also supports code generation from Behavioral models.[40]

File:Executions Analyser Code debugging.jpg
Code Editing and Debugging

Languages supported:

In accordance with Model Driven Development principles, Enterprise Architect provides an Integrated Development Environment that supports code editing (with Syntax highlighting and Intellisense), for Building, Debugging and Code Testing all from within the model.[41] Compilers and interpreters supported:

  • Microsoft Windows Native C
  • Microsoft Windows Native C++
  • Microsoft Windows Visual Basic
  • Microsoft .NET Family (C#, J#, VB)
  • Sun Microsystems Java.
  • PHP
  • GNU Compilers for C++, C and Ada (GCC & GDB )

Add-ins are available for integration with MS Visual Studio and Eclipse.

File:EA-test-points.jpg
Code Editor and Testpoints Manager

Test management

For code based testing there is support for:

  • xUnit Testing
This involves MDA transformation of Classes to NUnit or Junit Classes with the ability to generate unit tests from the model and automatically record the results against the tested Classes.[42]
  • Testpoint testing
This is a model based code testing. It is parallel to test contracts defined in ‘Design by Contract’ and it runs using debug definitions.[43]

Both of these methods support the test definitions and test results being logged against related Classes in the model.

Visual execution analysis

Integrated with building and debugging code Enterprise Architect allows the developer to perform abstract analysis of the software using Profiling and Sequence diagram generation:

  • Sequence diagram generation provides a means to analyze the general process flow and iron out inconsistencies [44]
  • Profiling summarizes, by thread and routine, the code's general efficiency [45]

System engineering

System Engineering is supported with SysML 1.3 modeling which can be coupled with executable code generation. SysML supports modeling from requirement definition and system composition using SysML Blocks and Parts, through to parametric model simulation.[46] The executable code generation supports embedded HDL system languages (Ada, VHDL and Verilog), or it can be coupled with behavioral code generation of the standard code languages defined above.

Data modeling

Enterprise Architect supports Data Modeling from the Conceptual to Physical levels, Forward and Reverse Engineering of Database Schemas,[47] and MDA transformation of the Logical (platform independent) to Physical DBMS(platform dependant).[48] Diagram types supported include:

  • DDL notation
  • ERD notation
  • IDEF1X notation
  • Information Engineering notation
File:DDL modeling.jpg
Database Modeling using a DDL diagram

Supported DBMSs:

Project management

File:EA-calendar.jpg
Calendar view of events

Features supporting project management include:

  • Resource Allocation and tracking using Gantt charts
  • Event Logging using model calendars
  • Workflow scripting for setting workflow processes
  • Security
  • Model Metrics

Change management

The key facilities supporting change management are:

  • Auditing[49]
  • Baseline Difference and Merge[50]
  • Version Control[51]

The auditing feature supports logging changes to the model. The Baseline Management feature allows snapshots of parts of a model to be created periodically. A baseline can be compared and merged with the current model or a branch of that model. This supports Branching model information to another repository, then adding updates and merging them back.

The Version Control interface supports the major version control applications:

File:GantChart and Model Mail.jpg
Gantt Chart of Project Tasks and Model Mail views

Integration with other tools

Features that support integration with other tools include:

  • XMI Import/Export: Supports the XMI 1.1, 1.2 and 2.1 specifications (and import of .emx files)
  • Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC)
  • CSV import/Export
  • Automation interface – supports a comprehensive API interface for use with any COM based language (and Java).

Among the Add-ins available are interfaces to VS .Net and Eclipse

See also

References

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  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  42. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  45. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  46. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  47. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  48. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  49. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  50. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  51. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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