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.

Can you help us?

Planning is underway for this year's UK UserGroup Event in May with the new features of EA12 to discover and best practice from users around Europe to share. But unfortunately the venue we hoped to use is not now available 

Do you have a suitable venue?

In order to keep our costs down for all attendees we rely on the generosity of EA users donating facilities. In exchange we give a number of free places so that the host organisation can get maximum benefit from the event.

Ideally we'd like a room in or close to London that can hold approximately 120 - 150 people, with one or two break-out rooms nearby for parallel streams of presentations and a space for refreshments/lunch and networking. If you have something which is not exactly like this, but similar, then we can be flexible! We pay for the food and any other charges, and do all the organisation.

The London location is important as many international delegates fly in to attend this, our largest annual European event.

If your company can help, or you think you may know of a suitable venue, please reply to this email or contact us via the form on the website at http://www.eausergroup.com/contact-ea-user-group as soon as possible. Thank You very much!

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

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.

Your last chance!. .. to meet and share experiences with other Enterprise Architect users and experts in Toronto, Canada on April 23/24

KPMG are hosting two days of great content at their downtown offices, featuring leading Business Analysts and Enterprise Architects across many industries.

There will also be an opportunity to meet Tom O'Reilly, COO of Sparx Systems plus several Global Sparx Partner organisations, who will be there to give insight and best practice advice.  

LAST FEW TICKETS AVAILABLE - so don't miss out on this great opportunity.

Visit http://www.in2grateit.com/EANorthAmerica/TorontoEARegistration.pdf to reserve your place TODAY.

Catch Software are delighted to be welcoming special guests Ian and Jackie Mitchell, founders of UK company Ability Engineering and developers of eaDocX, to the next Enterprise Architect User Group (EAUG).  Ian and Jackie are making the journey from the UK to New Zealand where they will present at the Auckland event on the 19th of November and in Wellington on the 20th of November.  eaDocX is the Microsoft Word and Excel document generator add-in for Enterprise Architect which allows ready-to-publish, high-quality documents to be produced in a couple of clicks.

Catch are a value-added reseller and training partner for Sparx Systems and run Sparx Systems New Zealand. They hold Enterprise Architect User Groups throughout the year across Auckland, Wellington and Canberra, with the aim of bringing Enterprise Architect users together to share ideas, best practice and experience. User Groups are a way to meet and interact with other Enterprise Architect users on all levels and abilities. At this, specially extended, event there will be a demo and Q&A session, as well as plenty of time for networking.

"We are pleased to be hosting Ian and Jackie here in Auckland and it's a real privilege that they are taking the time to present at the EA User Groups," says Stacy Busek, Communications Manager at Catch.  "The buzz around eaDocX has definitely reached our shores, so it'll be interesting to hear about the software from the team that developed it. Ian and Jackie both have a wealth of experience and I think the user group attendees will be in for a great, interactive session."

"It’s great to have the opportunity to meet EA and eaDocX users in New Zealand. We see the NZ market leading the way in using integrated BA and software development tools, so we’re looking forward to sharing ideas with you. (And talking rugby too). " - Jackie Mitchell

For more information on the event, please go to http://catchsoftware.com/news/category/shows-events/

About Ability Engineering

eaDocX is sold by Ability Engineering, a UK based company providing Training, Mentoring and Talent for Business Analysis and Management to the IT, mobile telecoms, finance and aerospace industries.  eaDocX has been developed and used in these environments over many years, so has been proved to cope with changing requirements, multiple releases, complex international environments and demanding stakeholders.

About Catch Software

Catch Software develops test management software for the global market and counts Fortune 500 and Global 2000 organizations among its customers. Their flagship product, Enterprise Tester, is award-winning test management software which offers great features, open architecture, and integration into Enterprise Architect, Rally, Atlassian's JIRA and Microsoft TFS - all backed by responsive support and a dedicated solutions team.

Leading the way in the test management space with over 60,000 users, Enterprise Tester is used by teams across 40 countries including those at Intel, Cox Communications, eBay, Bayer Healthcare, NCS, LG Electronics, PayPal, the US Navy and the US Air Force.

For more information about Catch, please go to catchsoftware.com

Contact Information

Catch Software
Kevin Kuck
Sales Manager
NZ: +64 9 303 2023 or US: +1 419 404 7432
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
catchsoftware.com

Catch Software is a proud partner of Sparx Systems and is pleased to sell and support their industry-leading UML CASE tool, Enterprise Architect. We love engaging with the Sparx Community, and as part of this, we host User Groups in New Zealand and Australia every two months.

If you’ve not attended a User Group before you may not be sure what to expect.  User Groups are gatherings held for Enterprise Architect users and enthusiasts. A presentation is given by one or more speakers, followed by group discussions on common interests, challenges and best practice. Here is an overview of the User Group we hosted in Auckland this September.

Why Auckland Council chose Enterprise Architect

Janet Wilkinson from Auckland Council presented to a diverse range of Enterprise Architect users. Auckland Council has been using Enterprise Architect for about a year and Janet talked to the group about the thought process behind them choosing Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect and outlined the challenges the Council faced.  She went on to cover their requirements, which included architectural modelling to facilitate strategic decision making, project solution modelling and design at all levels for projects. Summing up, Janet shared examples of the types of results they are starting to see.

The attendees at the User Group were very interested in this presentation, with several questions asked and everyone engaging in conversation.

There was a real sense of collaboration at the event and it was fantastic to see the Sparx community working through common issues together and offering solutions.

If you would like to find out more about this presentation, check out the slide deck: Enterprise Architecture Repository

SOA Modelling using Enterprise Architect

At September's Wellington User Group, Rajat Goyal from Certus Solutions walked us through a scenario covering key concepts of service architecture and modelling an SOA Solution using Enterprise Architect. Rajat discussed Enterprise Architect in comparison with other modelling tools, including IBM Rational Software Architecture and Visio.

Check out the slide deck for more information: SOA Modelling using Enterprise Architect

Want to get involved?

The dates for our next User Groups are as follows:

Auckland - Tuesday 19th November
Wellington - Wednesday 20th November
Canberra - Tuesday 10th December

If you have not decided to come along yet, read on to find out why you should get involved.

• User Groups give you access to experts. Catch Software have been using Sparx Systems for years and are happy to answer any questions.
• Gain support from real users. User Group speakers are not paid – they are honest and will tell you what works and what doesn’t.
• Meet friends, enjoy beer and nibbles, ask questions and join discussions with people in your community.
• It’s free to attend and open to everybody!

If you would like to find out more about our User Groups, check out our blogs and our events page.

As with everything we do, we would love to hear what you think. If there is a particular speaker you would like to see at an upcoming user group, or if you have a story to tell, let us know. We are always interested to hear about what is happening in the Sparx Systems Community!

Interested in finding out what Enterprise Architect services Catch offers? Sparx Systems Solutions >>