The full agenda for the next EAUG in Paris is available.

Register now from the EventBrite website (ticket: 75€).

EA User Group France 2015 Agenda

Enterprise Architect User Group (EAUG) - France, Sept. 2015

VISEO will host the first EAUG in France on Thursday, September 17^th 2015. This Enterprise Architect User Group will be held in Paris at "27 quai Le Gallo - Boulogne-Billancourt" (underground and tram stations are located nearby).

This first edition will introduce talks and presentations in French on a wide array of topics including Enterprise Architecture, modelling IT and software applications, generating and validating documentation from the models, and Systems Engineering (MBSE).

Enterprise Architect add'ins will be shown in a dedicated area, where users and experts will be able to share their opinions and experiences on notations, languages, methodologies around a coffee, tea or other refreshment.

The full agenda is yet to be defined, with a priority on sharing project experiences in using Sparx Enterprise Architect. Hence this User Group is opened to any company, expert, or consultant who would like to share and talk about their experience with the Enterprise Architect user community.

Online registration will be available soon (please contact us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like to be notified once registration is available).
VISEO operates as Sparx Systems main partner in France and has a member in the EAUG Steering Group (www.eausergroup.com).

French version:

VISEO organise le 17 Septembre 2015 le premier EAUG en France, User Group concernant l’outil de modélisation Enterprise Architect de Sparx Systems.  

Cette première édition comportera essentiellement des présentations en français et sera ouverte à des sujets aussi variés que l’architecture d’entreprise, la modélisation d’applications informatiques, l’ingénierie système à l’aide d’Enterprise Architect, ou encore à la génération et à la validation de documents à partir des modèles.

Des présentations d’add-ins sont prévues dans un espace dédié où nous pourrons également partager nos expériences autour d’un verre ou d’une tasse de café et confronter nos points de vue sur les notations, les méthodologies ou autres sujets d’intérêt. Des experts de l’outil et des méthodologies seront présents afin d'échanger notamment sur les bonnes pratiques.

Le programme détaillé n’est pas encore arrêté et nous souhaitons privilégier les retours d'expérience issus de projets plutôt que les présentations théoriques. C’est pourquoi nous demandons à toutes les entreprises intéressées souhaitant se joindre à la communauté francophone autour d’Enterprise Architect de nous proposer leurs sujets de présentation.

Si vous souhaitez assister en tant que visiteur, les modalités d’inscription seront bientôt communiquées. Vous pouvez vous contacter sur This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. si vous souhaitez être notifié directement dès l'ouverture des inscriptions. En attendant retenez la date du 17 Septembre 2015 dans vos agendas.

VISEO est partenaire de Sparx Systems pour la France et membre du comité directeur de l’EAUG (eausergroup.com).

EA User Group - London 2015

The response to the London User Group conference call to speakers has been phenomenal this year and even right at the 11th hour we've had another great speaker proposal through to finish off the line up.

So without further ado here's the official line up for May; 

Obviously the massive coup for us on the organisation committee is to have Tom O'Reilly at the event to deliver the keynote!

The Venue

The venue for this conference is; the Park Plaza County Hall, 1 Addington Street, London, SE1 7RY, United Kingdom.

Tickets

"Where can I get my ticket(s)?" I hear you cry, well, I'm glad that you asked! Tickets for the London User Group conference are available from the EA User Group website at a bargain £65.00 per person. Do swing by & pick up your ticket now to avoid disappointment.  

We hope to see you all in London on May 19th for what is promising to be the best London EA User Group meet yet.

EA User Group Conference; London - The agenda takes shape...

We have received an amazing level of response to the call for speakers for the London conference and can now provide a preview of how the agenda is shaping up for London; 

We're still in the draft stages and so timings and presentations are still subject to change.

The call for speakers doesn't close until the end of the month so if you have a story to share and would feel like sharing it with the community then This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The conference will be taking place at the Park Plaza County Hall, 1 Addington Street, London, SE1 7RY, United Kingdom.

Tickets for this event are already on sale via the EA User Group website.

We look forward to seeing you all in London.

When: Thursday, May 28, 2015
Where: Minneapolis, Minneapolis Airport Marriott
Address: 2020 American Boulevard East Bloomington MN 55425 

Sparx Systems would like to invite you to the upcoming Enterprise Architect Conference being held in Minneapolis, MN - May 28th hosted by Sparx Partner: APG.

Click here to Register

Have a Sparx Enterprise Architect topic you would like to present? The deadline for speaker submissions has now been extended until the 8th of April.

Call for speaker submissions

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

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.

Following the resounding success of last year’s first-ever event for the German Enterprise Architect User Community, it is our sincere pleasure to invite you once again on October 7th, 2014 to Munich. Thanks to the generosity of Airbus, this year’s European Enterprise Architect User Group Event 2014 will be held at Airbus Group Headquarters in Ottobrunn, southeast of Munich, Germany.

Clotilde Marchal, Head of Systems Engineering Steering Group, will start the keynote with insights into the strategic role of model based systems engineering (MBSE) and corporate initiatives in this area at Airbus Group, and will be followed by Carsten Strobel, Research Team Leader for Model-Based Systems & Software Engineering at Airbus Group. He will explain how only model-based development allows a network of associations to be displayed, analyzed and solved within a multidisciplinary environment, as tightly integrated as possible, yet above and beyond disciplines and domains. Infineon Technologies and the Austrian Virtual Vehicle Research Center will concentrate their joint speech on the use of Enterprise Architect in the automotive sector by presenting the main findings of the project VeTeSS. Furthermore, the organizers will also present interesting topics: Ian Mitchell from Ability Engineering will talk about "Models to Shout About" and Phil Chudley from Dunstan Thomas will have a speech on "Blocks, Ports and Their Connections - A Practical Approach to SysML 1.3 Modeling using Enterprise Architect".

These are only some of a wide variety of practical use cases that will be presented on two tracks on October 7th. All presentations will be delivered in two parallel sessions by dedicated Enterprise Architect experts, and during coffee and lunch breaks you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get to know users, speakers and stakeholders eager to share their experiences.

So, register today for the most interesting and informative meeting in the European Enterprise Architect User Community! Get the latest information on the newest trends and developments in the world of Enterprise Architect, learn the best tips and tricks from other users and even get the answer to that question you’ve always wanted to ask!

The User Group Event is organized by the Enterprise Architect User Group EAUG (Dunstan Thomas, Ability Engineering and LieberLieber Software), tickets are available from:
http://www.eausergroup.com/

Looking forward to seeing you in Munich,
Best wishes,

European Enterprise Architect User Group 2014
Tuesday, October 7th, 2014
9 am - 5 pm
Airbus Group
Willy-Messerschmitt-Straße
85521 Ottobrunn

Last May I went to the European EA User Group in the UK (Maidenhead) where the Enterprise Architect community gathered. Prior to delivering my presentation on the alternatives to set up a shared Enterprise Architect project, I attended several presentations, including the following ones that are covered in this article:

1. Pragmatic agile model driven development using smart use cases by Sander Hoogendoorn (Capgemini, NL)
2. Enterprise Architect Version 11 Cloud Services, OSLC and RAS by Phil Chudley (Dunstan Thomas, UK)

Pragmatic agile model driven development using smart use cases

Sander Hoogendoorn shared the use of smart use cases, coupled with Enterprise Architect and a custom-made code generation tool, Tobago MDA.

Smart Use Cases

Sander and his team at Capgemini developed their own agile process, called SMART, which involves the use of smart use cases to capture and manage functional requirements, as explained hereafter. Note: the SMART agile process has been applied over the past 10 years; it is based on agile and iterative best practices.

Smart use cases match « sea » and « fish » granularity use cases according to the following levels defined by Alistair Cockburn in his book "Writing Effective Use Cases":

Where traditional use case modeling can lead to several pages of documentation, including triggers, pre/post conditions, actors, main/alternative scenarios, and so on, smart use cases maintain a visual deliverable via use case diagrams as each use case is detailed by several smaller use cases connected with “extends” and “includes” associations (smart use cases can be reused amongst use cases). On average, a “standard” use case is associated with 20 smart use cases.

Stereotypes have been created to choose the type of a smart use case from a list of identified patterns: select, search, manage, file import or export, validation service, etc. Smart use cases also serve estimation purposes. An estimation value has been defined on the smart use case stereotypes to provide a default value (from 1 to 10 points) according to the selected type (e.g. 2 points for a “select” smart use case). This enables accessing all the information from our models and diagrams as illustrated below:

Here is another example with UI smart use cases in yellow and a Service smart use case in red, alongside their respective estimation points.

Project Management Dashboard

In order to manage the project according to the smart use cases defined in Enterprise Architect, www.speedbird9.com website has been created by Sander and his team. This site makes it possible to import/export smart use cases with Enterprise Architect via XMI or CSV files for planning and progress management.

Here is an illustration where smart use cases have been imported from Enterprise Architect:

Tobago MDA code generation tool

Sander released with his team Tobago MDA, a code generation tool built for smart use cases defined in Enterprise Architect. This tool generates source code based on templates, making it possible to define the content required by any programming language (e.g. dotNet C#, Java, PHP…). Tobago MDA is shipped with pre-defined templates used by Capgemini for different types of projects including Java, .Net, PowerBuilder (Sybase – SAP), and BI. Tobago MDA has been used in dotNet projects to produce 100% of the code for average use cases.

The Tobago templates are easy to understand text files. Syntax mechanisms built for these templates include tags and methods e.g. to loop on a class attributes, test an empty value, etc. Tobago MDA can access the Enterprise Architect models using an XML file created via an XMI export, or by connecting directly to an Enterprise Architect project without having to open Enterprise Architect.

The presentation ended with a demonstration; Sander created in the Enterprise Architect project a “search” smart use case to add a new Search feature for an existing dotNet web application. Once the model was updated, Tobago was launched to generate new C# files. Then Visual Studio was used to re-build the application. Finally the app was run to show that a new search feature was available, with criteria matching the attributes entered in the smart use case.

Tobago MDA is available from the following site: www.smartusecase.com.

New Enterprise Architect 11 features: Cloud Services, RAS, OSLC

Phil Chudley from Dunstan Thomas gave us an efficient speech and demo based on his in-depth trial of new Enterprise Architect 11 features: Cloud Services, OSLC, and Reusable Asset Service.

Cloud Services

Cloud Services makes it possible for Enterprise Architect 11 users to access Enterprise Architect projects from anywhere via the http/https protocols. As a result an Enterprise Architect project can be either accessed from the LAN or from the Internet. Cloud services provide short response times to suit slow remote access.

Cloud Services are available to download for free from Sparx Systems website. It can be installed as a Windows Service or integrated with an existing IIS web server. Installation includes a management client software. Setting up a user access to a project is very easy; only the url and credentials are required (compared with a project hosted on a local database requiring an ODBC connector driver and the connection string to the DB).

Note: this service doesn’t work with EAP files i.e. a DBMS must be used.

Note: Sparx Cloud Services mustn’t be confused with hosting services in the Cloud, such as a MS Azure SQL Database available online, since they aim at providing access to locally hosted Enterprise Architect projects from the Internet.

Once installed, the management software can be used to expose to the outside world one or several Enterprise Architect projects, as per the provided configuration including: http or https protocol, authentication mode, read-only access enabled/disabled, and setting any limitation on the max number of concurrent users. This software also displays the currently opened projects via the Cloud Services.

http connection to Enterprise Architect models has enabled Sparx Systems to provide additional features: OSLC and RAS.

OSLC: Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration

The Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is an open community that has defined a set of specifications to enable integration of software development, e.g. to let Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) and Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) software communicate and exchange information.

Enterprise Architect 11 currently supports OSLC to access and manage requirements only. Requirements can be accessed with an XML content through the use of urls from a browser. A client application can be implemented to access web services from Sparx Enterprise Architect in order to run queries or create new requirements.

Examples: Query -> http://server-name:port/repository-name/oslc/qc/?oslc.where=ss:type=“Functional”, Create -> http://server-name:port/repository-name/oslc/cf/

Note: it is currently possible to test OSLC queries from online SparxSystems Enterprise Architect projects, as illustrated below: http://sparxcloud.co.uk/Example/oslc/qc/

With the following url, results are limited to « Chuck Wilson » author: http://sparxcloud.co.uk/Example/oslc/qc/?oslc.where=dcterms:creator=%22Chuck%20Wilson%22

RAS: Sparx Systems Reusable Asset Service

Reusable Asset Service or RAS is intended to let various teams integrate in their respective Enterprise Architect projects distributed and reusable models/resources, stored in a central Enterprise Architect project, acting as a library or framework. Users may update the reusable assets and resources from Enterprise Architect providing they have a write access.

To use RAS, an Enterprise Architect project must be set up in a central database (e.g. MySQL, SQL Server…), with access via http using Sparx Cloud Services, where reusable models will be created and published. Users can access its content using the RAS feature from another Enterprise Architect project.

Provided a user has a write access, a package that for instance contain a class model for a Bookstore can be added to the shared and reusable project.

Once this is done, other teams of users can open the RAS model and import the published package to use it. Phil pointed out during his demo that management of dependencies between packages in RAS should be improved.

It seems to me that this feature could especially be useful and applied for a project Framework, or to let standards organizations publish and share their models for anyone to use in their Enterprise Architect project.

Conclusion

This year’s EA User Group has really been interesting thanks to the content delivered during the presentations. It has also been an opportunity to meet and exchange with other Enterprise Architect users and experts.

Official EA User Group website: www.eausergroup.com.