Displaying items by tag: sparx systems

We invite you to the Sparx Systems Canberra User Group meeting to be held on Wednesday 15 April 2015. This meeting will introduce Enterprise Architect 12, NIEM, TOGAF and discuss aspects of the North American Market. The meeting will be held at the Auditorium in the Australian National Botanic Gardens from 3.00pm to 6.00pm.

Please book early as seats are limited. Refreshments will be provided.

This event will also feature the following Guest Speakers:

• Chris Armstrong, CEO of Armstrong Process Group (APG) presenting on TOGAF and NIEM
• Wally McLaughlin, Sales Director from APG will discuss the use of Enterprise Architect in North America
• Veritec will be presenting on how Enterprise Architect is being used at the Department of Finance
• OMNILINK will present on how Enterprise Architect is being used to improve software applications
• Scott Hebbard, Communications Manager at Sparx Systems, will provide an overview of Enterprise Architect 12
• Vish Viswanathan, Managing Principal of CC&C Solutions will discuss TOGAF and how to "go all the way with EA" to help customers

We invite you to register for this live event in Canberra.

European Enterprise Architect User Group Conference

London 2015

Call for Speakers

If you are a user of Sparx Systems’ Enterprise Architect, we’re inviting you to share your user stories with the EA community at the next User Group event in central London on May 19th 2015.

We are interested in just about everything you do with Enterprise Architect, from the organisation of your model to enhancements you have made using MDG or the automation API, or even just a project with which you are especially happy. That said, we are not just after the sunshine stories and would be interested in hearing about any experiences learned the hard way.

Presentations of an obvious or purely commercial nature will not be accepted.

Some example topics are:

• Enterprise Architecture (TOGAF, DoDAF/UPDM)
• Business Architecture, Capability Mapping, Process Modelling
• Systems Engineering
• Business Analysis, Requirements Management
• Modelling Languages (UML, SysML, BPMN, ArchiMate)
• SOA, DDS, GIS, NIEM
• Data modelling
• Code generation/IDE integration
• Project management
• EA-based reporting
• EA scripting and automation
• Simulation
• Tool adoption/deployment
• MDG Technologies/UML profiles
• Model collaboration and management
• Test management

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. If so, please let us know and send us the title and synopsis of your proposed presentation along with a short bio.

Call for Speakers closes on 24th April, 2015

Enterprise Architect London Conference 2015

London, England on May 19th 2015

Conference Takes place at:

Park Plaza, County Hall, London
You will be confirmed as a speaker no later than 29th April, 2015.

European Enterprise Architect User Group 2015 in Zürich, March, 10th 2015

After a series of highly successful German Enterprise Architect User Community events in previous years, it is my great pleasure now to be able to announce a first time event in Zurich. Thanks to the support of UBS AG, the European Enterprise Architect User Group event will be held in Switzrland at the company's headquarters in Zurich. The event will include a series of lectures and a permanently-staffed Experts Corner, and during coffee breaks and lunch there will be plenty of time for more in-depth conversations with users and lecturers alike.

The lectures will be held alternately in English or German. In his keynote speech, David Würth, Enterprise Architect Specialist at UBS, explores the standardization activities and use of Enterprise Architect, and shares some of his enterprise-wide initiatives. Phil Chudley, TOGAF and BPMN specialist since their very beginnings, will illuminate us on the topic "Enterprise Architecture" and associated technologies...and of course you won’t want to miss presentations by Swisscom and the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB).

Save the date: Tuesday, March 10th, 2015, from 9.00 till 17.00 at UBS AG in Zurich

Registration at http://www.eausergroup.com/events

OMNILINK will attend Locate15 the premier Australian and New Zealand geospatial industry event in Brisbane from March 10-12 2015. OMNILINK, an organisation well known to the geospatial community across Australia and New Zealand will be promoting the integration of good modelling and planning methods and toolsets as a critical practice to maintain market presence, while leading the technology race.

Enterprise Architect will be showcased by OMNILINK at Stand 19 and they will demonstrate how the integration of good modelling and planning methods and toolsets are critical to maintaining market presence while leading the technology race.

Visit OMNILINK at Stand 19 and pick up your copy of the Case Study on how Enterprise Architect was used to drive the development of a new generation of OMNILINK spatial product and derive benefits that have become re-useable assets.

For almost a decade Sparx Systems has supported the international geospatial standards development effort and has strong business relationships with ISO/TC 211 and INSPIRE.

The European location Framework (ELF) is defined as an Enterprise Architect project and the ELF data model and the application schemas build upon the INSPIRE specifications.

More recently through the Office of Spatial Policy and in partnership with CSIRO Sparx Systems has been supporting the development of the Foundation Spatial Data Framework (FSDF).

Model-based development has established itself in more and more economic sectors, and is now also used in various scenarios for SAP projects. This means that both development as well as maintenance costs can be significantly reduced.

Over its entire lifetime, software costs money; in addition to pure development costs, significant maintenance costs arise during the utilization phase. As soon as the software is in live operation, associated costs are entered under “Software Maintenance” – costs which can reach up to 80 percent of overall lifecycle effort (see B. Hohler, Skript WRT Hannover 2008/09). According to an analysis by the software company Cast Research, maintenance costs alone amount to USD3.61 per individual line of code. It is also interesting to note that 47 percent of overall maintenance costs must be spent on dealing with problems, whereas 28 percent apply to verification and only 25 percent to implementing actual changes (see B. Hohler, ibid., p. 3).

In addition to good software design, the quality of the source code and, naturally, fulfillment of the software’s functionality are decisive for a lean maintenance cost structure. As a rule: The higher the quality of the software development, the lower the expenditures for operating the software. To avoid spiraling costs due to inadequate software design and low-quality source code, the link to model-based development is a promising approach – already underpinned by numerous studies and successes. The clear documentation and visualization provided by the models translate into time savings when becoming familiar with and developing the software, which in turn lowers maintenance costs. In this way, refactoring can be carried out from the start with well-structured software architecture, and continuously monitored...significantly extending software and system lifetime.

New tool connects model-based development and SAP

Gobas GmbH is a union of IT companies from the Braunschweig and Hannover metropolitan area which are focused on SAP and mobile development. Until only a short time ago, the model-based development of software in an SAP environment was not an issue for this company. Now, the strong growth in interest has led Gobas to develop its new tool - q.trans - for model-driven software development in SAP. “Many of our customers are running SAP, yet at the same time they are moving toward model-based development. In order to connect these two worlds in the best way, we have linked q.trans with Enterprise Architect,” says Markus Abel, CEO at Gobas.

With over 380,000 users worldwide, and of these around 60,000 in the German-speaking world, Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems is a widely-used UML modeling platform. Its implementation in an SAP environment, facilitated by Gobas q.trans, unlocks an entirely new circle of users: “We are pleased that q.trans was developed with the help of Enterprise Architect. This has created a bridge of sorts between Enterprise Architect and ABAP OO development in SAP, opening up a very interesting new market. Once again, the benefits brought by Enterprise Architect to optimization and better understanding of complex software projects is made clear,” emphasizes Hans Bartmann, CEO of SparxSystems Central Europe.

Model-based development with UML growing in popularity

Model-based development based on the graphical language UML/SysML (Unified Modeling Language/System Engineering Modeling Language) continues to find its way into more industrial sectors. The Industry 4.0 initiative also places model-based development squarely in the center. The growth in model-driven development is intensifying, not least due to the continual improvements in the UML/SysML modeling language.

Seventeen years ago, the industrial standards body OMG (Object Management Group) published its first UML specification. Meanwhile, work is being carried out on Version 2.5, which will provide developers with even more detailed description options for their models. With the introduction of SysML several years ago, the application options of model-based development have been expanded to include entire systems. More and more academics and users see the future of software and systems engineering clearly in model-based development, from which code can be automatically generated.

The core idea of model-based engineering is to create a functional model for the product to be developed. This functional model can be taken as a basis for simulation even during development, and once it is completed it serves as the foundation for the generation of code. It is estimated that consistent development and verification on the model level can translate into savings of somewhere between 30 to 50 percent.

In the scope of SAP development, the model-based method can be implemented for forward as well as reverse engineering. Specifically the area of reverse engineering has found rather strong resonance with customers who wish to further develop their SAP solutions. With this goal in mind, various model-based development tools available on the market were tested. The results show quite clearly that Enterprise Architect was able to extract the most data from SAP solutions via the XMI interface.

UML models can also be easily imported into an SAP system with Gobas q.trans to create the development-relevant objects there, or to change existing objects according to the model specifications (”Forward Engineering“). In addition to the source code, however, reliable documentation is an important part of any piece of software. The solution therefore enables the current state of software development to be exported into a model and in this way directly embedded into the audit-proof documentation of the project source code (”Reverse Engineering“). Furthermore, the tool allows the comparison between a model and existing ABAP OO code, while offering sophisticated metrics for quality assessment of models and ABAP OO code.

Integration of metrics for quality assessment

Reliable data and figures enable the application of the scientific method when it comes to measurability of quality and costs - a quantitative assessment of the characteristics of software products, processes and projects. “It has to do with the use of software measurement…achieving specific goals, such as project controlling, error reduction or efficiency improvement” (from: Informatik-Spektrum, vol. 36, book 6, December 2013). The application of this theory in practice, however, is still in its infancy. Many companies are facing the challenge of selecting the right software metrics for measurement, and of extracting relevant conclusions from the identified indicators in order to minimize risk in their software projects.

Therefore, based on the current state of scientific knowledge, various software metrics have been integrated into the new Gobas q.trans development tool. This enables ABAP OO developers to come to the right conclusions based on predetermined measured values. At the same time, modern software development methods such as agile and incremental approach methods are supported. With the help of the implemented software metrics, the software’s development status can be continuously analyzed and documented. The progress becomes visible, project targets can be reviewed, and development errors detected early on.

Overview of Gobas q.trans functionality and scope

- Forward Engineering (generation of ABAP source code from UML models; operates across packages; generation of getter and setter methods; generation of comments; automatic syntax check; consistency check for DDIC objects; versioning; setting of an import history)

- Reverse Engineering (generation of a UML model from ABAP source code; selection criteria for objects; customizing for object names; operates across packages)

- Quality Management (comparison of objects and packages between UML and SAP; detailed listing of attributes, methods and interfaces; operates across packages; code assessment using object-oriented software metrics; depth of inheritance (DIT), Law of Demeter (LoD), cohesion LCOM, instability and various others, such as McCabe and Halstead metric

- Supported object types: domains, data element, structure, table type, database table, class, interface, function groups and packages

With over 100 participants the second Enterprise Architect User Group Event in Germany was a great success. Airbus Group in Ottobrunn (Munich) provided the conference facilities and there was a lot of networking and discussion after the speeches and during the breaks. All registered participants will soon find the presentations at the Enterprise Architect user group site www.eausergroup.com for download.

We say thank you to Airbus Group for the great cooperation, to the organizing team for the excellent preparation and to all participants, that they gave us their interest and feedback. We are sure, that model based development and engineering will grow further and Enterprise Architect as a tool for different groups of users will foster its position in the user community.

DO-178B is the current standard in aviation industry for safety critical systems - also known as: "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification".

Find attached the White Paper including links to the UML Profile and a DO-178B glossary.

Updated 9th June, 2016: Covering all new features available in Enterprise Architect 12.1

Enterprise Architect integrates Requirements Management with other software development disciplines, by creating requirements directly in the model. Requirements Management is built into the core product, solving many of the issues of traceability, interdisciplinary team divisions, integration with change and configuration management systems.  Read the following whitepaper for more information:

ArchiMate is an industry standard notation developed by The Open Group for the graphical modeling of enterprise architectures. The notation has evolved to be fully aligned with TOGAF. Many companies recognise the value of these architectural models in understanding the dependencies between their people, processes, applications, data and hardware. Using ArchiMate allows them to integrate their business and IT strategies.

Gillian Adens, Director of Hippo Software, demonstrates how Enterprise Architect can be used to create ArchiMate models and viewpoints to help in understanding, documenting and communicating knowledge of the enterprise architecture. The webinar:

July Webinar Announced by Sparx Systems, register Today:

http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/webinar/webinar-registration.html

Business requirements are often stored as text documents, resulting in poor traceability, lost requirements and flawed software design. The Specification Manager in Enterprise Architect 11 can help address issues of traceability while providing the convenience of a simple in-place text editor. Create, edit and review elements as text representations of objects in the model, using a process that is well understood and familiar to business analysts and management professionals alike.

In this webinar you will learn how to: