London 2018 – User Group Day – Enterprise Architect User Group

Presenters and Abstracts London 2018

Plenary – Peter Lieber – Lieber Lieber Software

Peter Lieber is the founder and owner of a number of software and related companies, and since 2014 he has held the position of President at the Austrian Software Industry Association (VÖSI) (www.voesi.or.at). He enjoys sharing his business knowledge with entrepreneurs, managers and students, and with an underlying commitment to promoting the further evolution and global integration of Austria’s software sector. As the founder of SparxSystems Central Europe (www.sparxsystems.eu) and LieberLieber Software (www.lieberlieber.com), Peter focuses on the so-called model-based development of software and systems. This new approach is paving the way for innovation in even the most challenging projects, such as the engineering of complex safety-critical systems in alignment with the principles of Industry 4.0.

Community Speech “EA14”

Special inside to EA14 (the biggest launch of an EA version ever!). See and feel the new highlights and that your input from last year finally arrived also in the new release. Clearer Navigation Structure, Docked Property Windows (no need of any modal windows) for almost everything in a diagram, Easy change of views and technologies, Decision Modelling Notation (DMN) integrated to BPMN, SysML and SoaML, Journal functionality, and much more… (https://www.sparxsystems.eu/ea-sparx-systems/ea-news/article/news/enterprise-architect-14-beta-release-announcement/)
The main focus of this huge release is: Focus on your business not on the tool, raise productivity with your models.

User Stories

Ewald Müller – Lieber Lieber Software

Enterprise Architecture Management

Enterprise Architecture Management is very often over-engineered. A lot of information is collected, but nobody is aware of using it and so at some point in time, nobody cares anymore. Enterprise Architect as a tool provides huge number of modeling standards (>60) and a fascinating trick to leverage the issue of creating information silos nobody cares about is to identify domain specific needs in preferred and customized domain specific languages.
Adminstration and controlling of business processes is for management of huge organizations essential. Currently EAM focuses on business processes and IT cares about IT processes. To leverage current needs of Industry 4.0/IoT and modern finance industry we identified that you have to find a circle and even a new best-of-breed customized modeling language (based on Archimate, BPMN and UML using MDG technology for specific diagrams, toolboxes and more) to allow to have fulfilled either the needs of management, IT and software development.
In this speech you will see the reference model of a mid-sized german insurance company with some thousand applications and a lot of different stake holders and how they found a way to really life EAM to achieve their goals.

Stephen Channell – Deutsche Bank

Continuous Integration with Sparx and Visual Studio – a pattern for ArchOps

1. Presentation of framework tools (https://www.nuget.org/packages/EA.Gen.Model/ , https://www.nuget.org/packages/EA.Gen.Pool/ ) that enable Sparx models to be used within the batch environment of build servers.
2. Walkthrough of an example code-generation implementation using sparx models and Gen tools.
3. Demonstration of automated Continuous Integration from model-change through to tested code.

David Faus – Gemalto

David is a knowledge management evangelist at Gemalto and is responsible for the modeling platform based on EA and several tools, methods and services he developed. He has over 20 years of experience in modelling business requirements, functional specifications and also very technical and operational processes. During years and until now, David built a new modelling method based on a mix between UML based methods, GUI specification methods and knowledge management concepts. He is currently using a viral strategy within the “Open IS” group (an agile oriented IT department) to launch inception phases (through POCs) in almost all Gemalto business units, with more and more success

GMOD modelling platform (Gemalto MODeling): A Process (or model) Driven Knowledge Management platform based on EA

The GMOD (Gemalto MODeling) platform involves some advanced technical and methodological features implemented thanks to EA API openness and completeness:

A client / server web structure with a dedicated architecture for deploying models web views, involving model versions management.
A “Model Driven Knowledge Management” approach based on the life cycle where the model is considered as an information which may be capitalized as an enterprise knowledge. The innovation lies in the proposal of a multi meta-model environment that will be compliant with any business specificities, and deliver diagrams that can be considered and used as search engine inputs. As a result, diagrams are indexed and searched through the Gemalto search portal like any other indexed document (e.g. office documents).
The “UC method” (I am the author) implementation thru an EA add-on. UC represents a great alternative of the well-known standards such as ArchiMate and BPMN (we tried to use them twice but without any success).
An external tool called “SPARX EA Companion Tool” developed by using the very open EA API to:

1. Define automated deployments of HTML sites. This feature involves an html export post processing phase to make the diagrams more user friendly and consistent with the used meta-model. It also generates model diagrams which can be indexed by any search engine (which is not the standard case in EA).
2. Run models integrity checks (and the implicit business rules involved by the used meta-model)
3. Generate model reports: these are often used to generate the version comments in the source configuration management tool (for model versions management)

Phil Chudley – Dunstan Thomas Consulting

Phil Chudley is a principal consultant at Dunstan Thomas Consulting Ltd. He has been using Enterprise Architect for over 12 years, and has vast modelling experience ranging from UML, BPMN and SysML. He has provided training consultancy for numerous organisations in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. These organisations cover sectors ranging from financial to aerospace and defence.
Phil has also developed two extensions for Enterprise Architect, BPMN Generator and EA Safe Delete.
Phil’s latest consultancies are the development of scripts for automated project workflow and validation /export of elements and relationships, and the management of RDF vocabularies including the import and export of RDF XML files

Lessons learned from the API

Over the past few years, Phil has developed many scripts and extensions for Enterprise Architect, many of which have “pushed the limits” of the API. During this session Phil will share his experiences of using the Enterprise Architect API for both scripting and extensions. Phil will highlight common mistakes when developing scripts and extensions and will share specific experience in: • Adding elements to diagrams • Adding legends to diagrams • Adding attributes to elements • Managing tagged values

Martyn Harris – Asystsu

Formed in 2012, Advanced Systems Understanding Ltd (AsystsU) is a privately owned UK company specialising in Systems Engineering and Enterprise Architecture. The company is 21 full time employees strong but has an active associate programme to draw in further specialists. AsystsU has a mix of retired military personnel and deep subject matter experts. It has generated a strong track record within defence, but applies its bespoke Model Driven Systems Engineering and Architecture (MDSEA) approach across many industries. The MDSEA has proven extremely successful at enabling widespread architectural federation and the ability to link different repositories and even the products of different tools. However, Sparx EA remains the tool of choice for modelling throughout.

UTILISATION OF SPARX ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT IN NATO FEDERATED MISSION NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

INTRO

NATO FMN is the post Afghanistan initiative to ensure that the coalition is ready to deploy any mixture of national forces on any operation in a pre-prepared state to interoperate effectively, not only in terms of communications and IT but also at a military capability level.
The FMN Mission Thread Approach was designed to manage the complexity of different operational scenarios and enable all nations to pre-plan their contributions.
The FMN Mission Thread Approach has now been mandated to all nations by the NATO Military Council.

MISSION THREAD APPROACH

Originally created by AsystsU to define the MoD JEF Model; what forces were required on the existing SAG scenarios
Work was utilised to define the User Requirements across the MoD war fighters.
Success led to demonstrating this to NATO.
Reference Mission Threads are based on NATO doctrine.
Tailored Mission Threads – both tailored to specific Ops and Tailored to specific capabilities/equipment
This enables nations to develop known capability packages (military services) that follow a common process and utilise the national equipment. This enables preplanning for any op by a modular approach to joining the capability packages together.

TOOLS

AsystsU utilise Sparx EA as the System Engineering tool; it deals with the complexity of all the information and ties this to provenance
Sparx has proven readily adaptable and extensible as an engineering tool used by architects for other architects and experts (trainers, IT, Cyber etc). We refer to this as a model.
AsystsU have developed automatic translation tools that take the underlying info and translate this in to other tools whose purpose is more focussed on Management Information. We refer to this as Architecture and share it more broadly.
Effectively, using a common method, one can manage having different repositories and even different tools.

EVOLUTION

Aim to pre plan Operations to 85% maturity
This would utilise the written doctrine already mature in all militaries. It simply uses a more common language than English; that of symbols in Sparx models.
This easily demonstrates the gaps in doctrine and the inconsistences between doctrines.
The central architecture can then be utilised for other specialist roles, effectively tying all parts of the organisation together towards common goals with common understanding.
- CYBER
- Training
- Procurement
- Intelligence
- BIG DATA

CONCLUSION

The NATO approach to architecture is still immature yet the basis for utilising it to take the entire organisation forward is growing real impetus. There is a need for experienced modellers and architects of all specialities, to evolve and professionalise the whole endeavour. Sparx EA isn’t the tool of choice for the end product but it remains the easiest tool to utilise when understanding and exploiting information. It has proven readily translatable in to a variety of end architect tools such as MooD, Archi, BizzDesign and ARIS.

How To…

Guillaume Finance – VISEO

After several years of experience in software programming, Guillaume has worked for more than 11 years with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect tool to build and maintain models for software projects and produce functional and technical specifications based on the expected level of deliverables. As a modelling and EA expert/consultant at VISEO, official Sparx Systems Value Added Reseller in France, Guillaume also provides support, expertise and coaching services on UML, SysML and Sparx EA. Guillaume runs training sessions on Sparx EA with UML or SysML.

www.umlchannel.com | www.eautils.com [email protected] Twitter: @umlchannel

Extending EA with custom scripts to cater for specific needs and user requests using Sparx API

Enterprise Architect supports most modelling languages and notations i.e. UML, BPMN, SysML, and ArchiMate. Whether EA is used to build models for a software application, identify business processes, define the system with the MBSE approach, or carry the IT landscape via the business, application and technical layers, customizing the notation with stereotypes and adding tailored features is almost a recurring request. Automated tasks and additional features can be built using EA API via scripts, add-ins, external tools, etc.

Based on a large number of scripts implemented for clients involved in software, data, and systems engineering, Guillaume will share his experience on this growing activity over the past years:

Overview of the covered topics (custom Excel import/export, model QA, save users’ time in avoiding repetive or time consuming tasks, manage EA users & groups via Excel, run a reverse on unsupported languages such as Fortran…)
Demonstration of a selection of scripts.
The need to organize and name scripts.
Debug scripts.
Compatibility with different DBMS and the Cloud connexion
Hints and custom scripts to publish scripts from the “dev EA project”
Addressing the lack of sub menus with more than 20 scripts
Automatically trigger scripts with Geert’s free ea-matic add-in

Bert Dingemans – EAxpertise

Bert is a data architect working often with Enterprise Architect mostly for UML class diagrams and ArchiMate 3.0. He uses Enterprise Architect for generating message documentation, ETL scripts, Database models and XSD files. Furthermore he is modelling enterprise architectures with ArchiMate 3.0.IDEA and the WPP are developed by Bert and these OSS products can be found at http://eaxpertise.nl

Using Enterprise Architect for architecting a Big Data Platform

Many organisations are investigating the possibilities of Big Data solutions, for example in the energy sector. Introducing Big Data is new and traditional approaches are of limited use. Think about introducing data-lab functionalities, innovative and agile approaches, new technologies like NoSql or Hadoop. How are you going to support these activities in an organisation as an architect and how can Enterprise Architect support you in adding architectural value.
In this session we will discuss a reference architecture for a Big Data Platforms, modelling techniques, architectural patterns and agile approaches all supported by the use of Enterprise Architect. You will see examples of big data patterns, solutions and templates based on ArchiMate.

Jasen Mitchell – Airbus

Getting more out of Enterprise Architect in large software development projects

Exploiting the strengths of Enterprise Architect we have benefited from EA throughout the software life cycle at Airbus Defence and Space. In this talk Jasen explores how EA has provided improved access to information, saved time by auto-generating documentation, provided automatic software test creation and can simplify the compliance problems associated with software development on large space projects.

Robert Sheridan

Robert started his career in IT in 1991 after completing an MSc at the University of York which gave him a broad foundation. After a stint in the NHS as a jack of all IT trades Robert worked as a developer before switching to business analsis (though he keeps his hand in at SQL). Doing the MSc gave Robert an interest in methods and he started using UML around 2000 on the recommendation of a colleague who was researching methods. In the mid 1990s Robert had been introduced to case tools; an evaluation of the market it about 2006 led Robert to start using Sparx Enterprise Architect and he has since seen no reason to move away from it.

Robert has succesfully set up EA repositories and trained and mentored people on using EA for business analysis in a number of companies as well as using it to model data, processes and applications and generate documents. Why use EA? Using EA my productivity is far higher than when I used Word and Visio, especially in complex projects where the revisions need to be tracked.

Using Class Diagrams for Data Migration

In this presentation, Robert will show direct mappings and mappings via transformations that are needed to move data from one application to another.

Bert Dingemans – EAxpertise

Bert is a data architect working often with Enterprise Architect mostly for UML class diagrams and ArchiMate 3.0. He uses Enterprise Architect for generating message documentation, ETL scripts, Database models and XSD files. Furthermore he is modelling enterprise architectures with ArchiMate 3.0. IDEA and the WPP are developed by Bert and these OSS products can be found at http://eaxpertise.nl

Integrated Data Architecture Add On for Enterprise Architect

Enterprise Architect has great implementations of multiple techniques for creating data models. For example UML class diagrams, the extended data model, ArchiMate and matrix views for specific association types. This gives you the opportunity to create conceptual, logical and physical data models. However integration of these modelling layers is possible but can be rather tedious. Therefor http://eaxpertise.nl is developing an Open Source extension named IDEA (Integrated Data Entity Architecture) This Add On is based on numerous scripts and screens making the integration of the before mentioned data modelling layers simple and fully automated. Furthermore the extension has an advanced web interface giving non modellers access to all your (integrated) data models. Participants of this session will receive a sample repository containing the automation scripts.

Modelling

Rudi Claes – INNO.COM

I am a senior solution architect and enterprise architect, associated with inno.com (www.inno.com). Since 2006, I have been implementing, teaching, coaching, and realizing projects with Sparx Enterprise Architect for various organizations in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg. With a specialization and certification in the Microsoft business intelligence (BI) stack since 2008, I have also delivered various BI training courses and realized multiple BI projects. EA4BI combines all my favorite ICT topics –enterprise architecture, modeling, business intelligence and Sparx.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudi-claes-39a696b

Practical business intelligence modeling with EA4BI

After the introduction of the EA4BI framework to the academic world (https://kuleuvencongres.be/poem2017/articles/program-IndustryTrack) and the Sparx community (http://www.eausergroup.com/past-events/october-2017-brussels/13-past-events/155-brussels-event-trainings-2017), it has been used during a couple of real-life projects. After a short introduction of the framework by means of some practical examples, the experiences gained with business intelligence modeling in general and EA4BI during these projects will be shared and discussed.

Ian Mitchell – Ability Engineering

A long-standing EA user, business analyst mentor and teacher, Ian is the author of the popular eaDocX® document generator for EA and the EA model quality tool Model Expert, as well as being heavily involved with the design of Prolaborate. He also shares his observations from 30+ years in IT at www.theartfulmodeller.com.

Modelling with Instances in EA

Most of our EA modelling happens with Elements: Requirements and Use Cases, Classes and Components. But there’s another bit of EA which deals with the Instances of those elements. But what does that mean? And is it useful?

In this session, Ian will see not just how to create and manipulate instances in EA, but also how they can add another dimension to (some parts of) your models. We’ll look specifically at the lower layers of your Architecture models, where abstract ideas start to become real live ‘things’: servers, locations, software systems, and see how the combination of EA abstract ideas and real instances can create some useful insights, when instances get populated with real numbers.

Jan de Liefde – The Collective

Jan de Liefde is working as a senior consultant for public and private parties. His working field is mostly related to Model Based (Systems) Engineering and Technical Management during the different stages of the System Life Cycle of Infrastructure systems such as tunnels, sluices, water surge barriers and metro.

Enterprise Architect as an modelling platform for the integrated design of a metro system

In this presentation we look at the modelling of a large infrastructure system like a metro system by using Enterprise Architect. We present not only how we made the design by using Use Cases, Functions, Objects and Interfaces but also how we integrated test coverage in relation to release management , Hazard analyses, Geographical deployment, management reporting and specific rail items such as track zones and safe working areas in the design. We will close our presentation with a view on the next steps we are taking to model a network oriented system like a public transportation system.

Nizam Mohamed – Prolaborate

Extending the value of models by reaching beyond the Modelling fraternity

Modellers spend a big deal of time and efforts to create models that are of immense value. But most models fail to be that indispensable part of the enterprise information ecosystem due to lack of visibility. Positioning EA models as the pivotal source of knowledge for due-diligence and business decisions would multiply the value of EA models several folds and also ends up in the model being more relevant and accurate. This talk will discuss the tools and techniques to make models more consumable and foster wider engagement and feedback.

Jan de Liefde – The Collective

Enterprise Architect as an (integrated) modelling platform for the Infrastructure and Industrial Domain.

Is Enterprise Architect usable as an integrated modelling platform for Infrastructure and industrial systems? For a positive answer on this Enterprise Architect should not only be enable to support mechanical, electrical, industrial automation design and safety analysis but also offer graphical presentations for non-engineers like fire departments, traffic operators, legislation departments, etc. This presentation shows engineering artefacts like hazards, event trees, FMECA’s and fault trees for supporting safety analysis and piping & instrumentation diagrams, one line schema’s, elevation diagrams and instrument loop diagrams for supporting electrical, mechanical engineers and instrumentation engineers. This talk has been updated since 2017, with an updated MDG including new modelling elements and connectors, plus an integration with Prolaborate.

Agenda