Starting with ArchiMate -1

In this blog I would start sharing my experiences and leanings in Enterprise architecture. In my fist blog about EA I would discuss the basic of modeling Enterprise architecture using ArchiMate.

ArchiMate, an Open Group Standard, is an open and independent modelling language for enterprise architecture. Just as any modeling standards  purpose of a enterprise architecture modeling standards is to reduce the ambiguities that occur in natural-language descriptions and ArchiMate is a decent language for  that. ArchiMate, with its business layer, application layer and technical layer helps us to model the different aspects of IT Architecture It great way to illustrate high-level couplings of business processes, people (as roles), applications, data and infrastructure in an organization.

Features :-

• A language for describing Architecture
• Framework describes the business layer,application layer and Technology Layer
- With relations between the layers
• Graphical language with formal semantics
• Techniques for Visualization and Analysis for various stakeholders
• Open standard maintained by The Open Group

There are three core layers in ArchiMate:

1. The business layer models the products and services offered to both internal and external customers, which are realized in the organization by business functions and processes, performed by business actors. It also represents the business objects utilized by people and processes.

2. The application layer models the applications and software services, which support the business layer.

3. The technology layer models the infrastructure services, which are required to run the applications, realized by communication hardware and system software.

Also, the core layers consist of three types of elements, which are:

• objects that act (active objects)
• objects that represent the behavior of those ‘objects that act’ (behavioral objects)
• objects that cannot act and which are acted upon by that behavior (passive objects)

Here are the core ArchiMate artifacts

Active Structural Entities
*	A business actor is an organisational entity that is capable of performing behaviour
*	A business role is an entity responsible for performing specific behaviour
*	A business collaboration is an aggregate of two or more business roles, which work together to perform a collective behaviour
Behaviour Entities
*	A business process groups behaviour based on an ordering of activities, intended to produce a defined set of outcomes, i.e., products and services
*	A business event is something that happens (internally or externally) and influences a behaviour
*	A business interaction describes the behaviour of a business collaboration
Passive Entities
*	A business object is a passive element, which has relevance from a business perspective
Informational Entities
*	A representation is defined as a perceptible form of the information carried by a business object
Active Structural Entities
*	An application component is a modular, deployable, and replaceable part of a software system that encapsulates its behaviour and data, and exposes these through a set of interfaces
*	An application collaboration is an aggregate of two or more application components that work together to perform collective behaviour
Behaviour Entities
*	An application function groups automated behaviour that can be performed by an application component
*	An application service exposes an automated behaviour of an application
Passive Entities
*	A data object is suitable for automated processing
Structural Entities
*	A node is a computational resource upon which artifacts may be stored or deployed for execution
*	A device is a hardware resource upon which artifacts may be stored or deployed for execution
*	An artifact is a physical piece of data that is used or produced in a software development process, or by deployment and operation of a system

In the next section we discuss about modeling  relationship and  derived relationship.