Enterprise Architecture Description Research Articles

Semantic Enterprise Architecture Oriented Test Case Generation for Business process

Background and Objectives: The area of enterprise architecture encompasses various domains, the most complicated of which concerns developing an enterprise business architecture. Although many state-of-the-art enterprise architecture frameworks describe the architecture by abstract levels, they still fail to provide accurate syntactic and semantic descriptions. Several previous conducted studies were looking for different objectives elaborated on modeling enterprise architectures. However, none of those studies tried to develop a modeling that generates test cases which would later be used for validation and/or verification. Therefore, the main contribution of this study is generating a set of test cases based on the descriptions yielded from enterprise business processes in early steps; then, the amount of later reviews and changes can be significantly lessened.Methods: Following the objective of accurate validation and/or verification of the enterprise business processes within an enterprise's architecture development, this paper proposes a new method based on the enterprise architecture design. Throughout the iterative cycle of the proposed method, initially, the enterprise goals will be extracted based on the TOGAF framework. Afterwards, it will be subjected to syntactical modeling based on the Archimate language. Then, semantics will be added to the syntactic model of the enterprise business processes based on the WSMO framework and formalize manually to B language by using defined transition rule. Therefore, in order to discover test cases, a set of test coverage will be tested on the formal model. Results: The proposed method has been implemented in the marketing and sales department of a petrochemical corporation, where the results show the validity and also the effectiveness of the method. Based on the implementation of our method on the selected case study, the details of the business process have been defined based on an enterprise level, the level of abstraction is decreased by syntactic and semantic modeling of enterprise architecture description, the formal descriptions created using the proposed transition rules for sampling.Conclusion: The proposed method starts from the goals of enterprises; therefore, the output samples are efficiently precise. By adding semantics to the syntactic models of enterprise architecture, the degree of abstraction has been decreased. By creating a formal model, the model can be subjected to sampling. For future work, it is suggested to use the proposed method for the automatic generation of codes.

The evolution of Enterprise Architecture in scopes of digital transformation

Nowadays the business has to develop in a rapidly changing environment. Globalization, digitalization and emerging information technologies affect not only the business processes of organizations, but they change the enterprise architecture in a complex way. The purpose of this research is to consider standard existing approaches to the Enterprise Architecture description and modeling. Moreover, the aim of this paper is to point out modern modeling frameworks that display such technologies as the Internet of Things, the Industrial Internet of Things and others, for a complete description of the enterprise model within the framework of Industry 4.0 and digital transformation.

A Methodology for Automatic Formal Verification of Enterprise Architecture

For over a decade, IT-business alignment has been ranked as a top-priority management concern, but there is little research on practical ways to achieve the alignment. EA development is a continuous iterative process, which implicitly ensures the achievement of a specific IT-business alignment level. Therefore, it is necessary to formalize the requirements for architecture and be able to automatically verify them. The authors propose a new methodology for detecting logical contradictions in enterprise architecture models based on a model checking approach adopted in the context of business modeling. In such a methodology, they use ArchiMate standard for a conceptual enterprise architecture description language which is fully aligned with TOGAF. The authors also offer several important verification queries and demonstrate practical applicability of their approach using a software prototype of the modeling tool which exploits MIT Alloy Analyzer model checking framework integrated with AchiMate Archi workbench.

Analysis of the consistency of enterprise architecture models using formal verification methods

Э.А. Бабкин - кандидат технических наук, PhD in Computer Science, профессор кафедры информационных систем и технологий, Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики»Адрес: 603155, г. Нижний Новгород, ул. Большая Печерская, д. 25/20E-mail: eababkin@hse.ruН.О. Пономарев - студент магистерской программы «Бизнес-информатика», Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики»; инженер группы разработки программного обеспечения АО «Интел»Адрес: 603155, г. Нижний Новгород, ул. Большая Печерская, д. 25/20E-mail:nik4nikita@gmail.com Разработка архитектуры предприятия является сложным процессом, но в то же время позволяет решить проблему синхронизации возможностей и потребностей бизнеса и информационных технологий (ИТ). Решение данной проблемы достигается за счет уточнения понимания и формализации описания бизнес-процессов и взаимодействия элементов системы путем их формального описания. Наличие большого числа взаимодействующих бизнес-процессов и сущностей архитектуры предприятия объясняет необходимость проверки их корректности. Поэтому необходимо их автоматически верифицировать, на основе формализации требований к архитектуре. В данной работе предлагается метод обнаружения логических противоречий в моделях архитектуры предприятия, на основе частного случая подхода к проверке моделей, примененного в бизнес-моделировании. В качестве языка описания архитектуры предприятия в работе используется современный открытый и независимый язык ArchiMate. Разрабатываемый The Open Group стандарт предоставляет общую спецификацию для описания построения и функционирования бизнес-процессов, организационных структур, информационных потоков, ИТ-систем и технической инфраструктуры предприятия. В качестве верификатора выбран формальный язык реляционной логики и инструментарий системы MITAlloy Analyzer, позволяющий выполнять анализ ограничений модели в терминах реляционной логики путем автоматической генерации структур, которые удовлетворяют требованиям логической модели. В данной работе предлагается упростить и автоматизировать процесс спецификации и верификации моделей предметной области архитектуры предприятия с помощью визуального редактора конструирования моделей на языке ArchiMate - Archi. Разработанный авторами плагин к редактору осуществляет трансляцию моделей архитектуры предприятия на язык системы Alloy Analyzer и в качестве основы для построения конкретных моделей предметной области использует метамодель ключевых элементов спецификации ArchiMate. Предложенный метод и программные решения апробированы на примере пользовательского кейса архитектуры предприятия компании ArciSurance.Исследование выполнено при финансовой поддержке РФФИ в рамках научного проекта № 16-06-00184 А «Разработка и исследование моделей online-дискуссии на материале обсуждения политических новостей»

Empirical insights into the development of a service-oriented enterprise architecture

Organisations use Enterprise Architecture (EA) to reduce organisational complexity, improve communication, align business and information technology (IT), and drive organisational change. Due to the dynamic nature of environmental and organisational factors, EA descriptions need to change over time to keep providing value for its stakeholders. Emerging business and IT trends, such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), may impact EA frameworks, methodologies, governance and tools. However, the phenomenon of EA evolution is still poorly understood. Using Archer's morphogenetic theory as a foundation, this research conceptualises three analytical phases of EA evolution in organisations, namely conditioning, interaction and elaboration. Based on a case study with a government agency, this paper provides new empirically and theoretically grounded insights into EA evolution, in particular in relation to the introduction of SOA, and describes relevant generative mechanisms affecting EA evolution. By doing so, it builds a foundation to further examine the impact of other IT trends such as mobile or cloud-based solutions on EA evolution. At a practical level, the research delivers a model that can be used to guide professionals to manage EA and continually evolve it.

Modeling resources and capabilities in enterprise architecture: A well-founded ontology-based proposal for ArchiMate

The importance of capabilities and resources for portfolio management and business strategy has been recognized in the management literature. Despite that, little attention has been given to integrate the notions of capabilities and resources in enterprise architecture descriptions. One notable exception is a recent proposal to extend the ArchiMate framework and language to include capability and resources and thus improve ArchiMate׳s coverage of portfolio management. This paper presents an ontological analysis of the concepts introduced in that proposal, focusing in particular on the resource, capability and competence concepts. We provide an account for these concepts in terms of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). The analysis allows us to identify semantic issues in the proposal and suggests well-founded recommendations for improvements. We revise the proposed metamodel in order to address the identified problems, thereby improving the semantic clarity and usefulness of the proposed language extension. Two real-world cases are modeled with the resulting metamodel to show the applicability of the constructs and relations in an industrial setting.

Managing changes in the enterprise architecture modelling context

Enterprise architecture (EA) models the whole enterprise in various aspects regarding both business processes and information technology resources. As the organisation grows, the architecture of its systems and processes must also evolve to meet the demands of the business environment. Evolving an EA model may involve making changes to various components across different levels of the EA. As a result, an important issue before making a change to an EA model is assessing the ripple effect of the change, i.e. change impact analysis. Another critical issue is change propagation: given a set of primary changes that have been made to the EA model, what additional secondary changes are needed to maintain consistency across multiple levels of the EA. There has been however limited work on supporting the maintenance and evolution of EA models. This article proposes an EA description language, namely ChangeAwareHierarchicalEA, integrated with an evolution framework to support both change impact analysis and change propagation within an EA model. The core part of our framework is a technique for computing the impact of a change and a new method for generating interactive repair plans from Alloy consistency rules that constrain the EA model.

Enterprise architecture patterns for business process support analysis

The field of enterprise architectures lacks architecture patterns that would support analysis of a given enterprise architecture, comparison of different enterprise architecture solutions and provide guidelines for development of a target enterprise architecture based on the analysis of existing enterprise architecture. In this paper, we focus on business process support analysis using information derived from enterprise architecture description. We give a systematic overview of important aspects. We establish and formally define foundational enterprise architecture patterns for business process support analysis. They are implementation independent and enable more efficient qualitative architecture analysis of business process support, which is the basis for achieving more optimal business operation. We have defined the patterns using the standard enterprise architecture language – ArchiMate. They are formalized in a way that enables their implementation in enterprise architecture tools. This is an important characteristic that allows for efficient work by automatic detection of different, more or less suitable, architecture structures. We have derived the patterns based on real-world enterprise architecture descriptions and have used and verified them in enterprise architecture analysis and planning projects for four large organizations. The enterprise architecture analysis patterns address an important research issue in the field of enterprise architectures that has so far not been systematically researched.

Interface descriptions for enterprise architecture

This paper describes our experiences in implementing a repository-based system that records and manages architectural information for an organization-wide set of enterprise information systems. The system is called Interface Descriptions for Enterprise Architecture (IDEA). The IDEA system business case and system creation are discussed, and the use of the system is exemplified by applying it to a set of information systems within a large corporation. We show how the existence of a managed enterprise architecture description enables an important set of analyses: risk analyses, architecture analyses, and change management analyses. Finally, we discuss how the IDEA system has the potential to catalyze even more profound change by changing how the various systems’ stakeholders interact.

Enterprise architecture modelling—the issue of integration

The problem of aligning and integrating business and IT is hampering many companies in their strategic and tactical development. Constructing integrated architecture models contributes to tackling this problem. Unfortunately, no enterprise architecture description language currently exists that fully enables integrated enterprise modelling. A variety of architectural domains are commonly distinguished for which architects use their own modelling techniques and concepts, tool support, visualisation techniques, etc. In this paper we outline such an integrated language and describe concepts that relate architectural domains. This language also serves as a bridge between other existing modelling languages. Furthermore, we present the design of a workbench for enterprise architecture that serves as a modelling tool and a tool integration environment at the same time: it supports both the integration of models in existing modelling languages and the integration of existing modelling tools.

CONCEPTS FOR MODELING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES

A coherent description of enterprise architecture provides insight, enables communication among stakeholders and guides complicated change processes. Unfortunately, so far no enterprise architecture description language exists that fully enables integrated enterprise modeling, because for each architectural domain, architects use their own modeling techniques and concepts, tool support, visualization techniques, etc. In this paper, we outline such an integrated language and we identify and study concepts that relate architectural domains. In our language, concepts for describing the relationships between architecture descriptions at the business, application, and technology levels play a central role, related to the ubiquitous problem of business-ICT alignment, whereas for each architectural domain we conform to existing languages or standards such as UML. In particular, usage of services offered by one layer to another plays an important role in relating the behaviour aspects of the layers. The structural aspects of the layers are linked through the interface concept, and the information aspects through realization relations.