Archi Forum

Archi Plug-ins => Other Plug-ins => Topic started by: krisrr3 on August 29, 2023, 21:05:57 PM

Title: New Plugin - Technology Evolution Tracker
Post by: krisrr3 on August 29, 2023, 21:05:57 PM
Technology enterprises are constantly evolving, and it is hard to keep track of all past, current and future modernization initiatives in a relatively automated manner. Leaders who need to understand historical decisions need the information pretty quickly and it can be a humongous task due to the information being scattered and attrition.

The reasons that make it important to keep track of the technology evolution of an enterprise in one tool



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I am proposing to develop a plugin (with community support) to aggregate data from various sources and create views in Archimate that will be relevant to various stakeholder levels.



Keen to get initial feedback and understand if this is worthwhile implementing.
Title: Re: New Plugin - Technology Evolution Tracker
Post by: Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie on August 30, 2023, 16:21:36 PM
Hi,

Quote from: krisrr3 on August 29, 2023, 21:05:57 PMI am proposing to develop a plugin (with community support) to aggregate data from various sources and create views in Archimate that will be relevant to various stakeholder levels.

I've had discussions on this topic several times in the past years. That's related to the idea of creating a digital twin of an enterprise (or its information system). Not so sure a plugin is the best way to achieve this. I think it would be best to create "adapters" that are able to export information from one specific system and convert them into a small, domain specific, models using the ArchiMate Model Exchange File Format (see these links XSD (http://www.opengroup.org/xsd/archimate/) Guide (https://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/archimate31-exchange-file-format-guide/). Then is should be enough (at least for a MVP) to import all of them into a single Archi model.

Regards,

JB
Title: Re: New Plugin - Technology Evolution Tracker
Post by: jsimoncello on August 31, 2023, 09:15:35 AM
hi,

Quoteit would be best to create "adapters" that are able to export information from one specific system and convert them into a small, domain specific, models using the ArchiMate Model Exchange File Format (see these links XSD Guide.

+1, though instead of OEF files, I am using a lot of jArchi scripts to import directly in archimate model data from excel files, CSV, calling rest api (No SQL Database yet, I had problems calling jdbc from jArchi).

In your use case, creating views seems (to me) the hardest part : adding elements to view is easy but organizing them in a clean and readable layout is a bit daunting.
Title: Re: New Plugin - Technology Evolution Tracker
Post by: krisrr3 on September 03, 2023, 18:48:11 PM
Let me take the time to understand how JArchi scripts work and create an MVP. Any guidance on documentation I should go through as a pre-requisite is appreciated.
Title: Re: New Plugin - Technology Evolution Tracker
Post by: Phil Beauvoir on September 04, 2023, 11:08:38 AM
Quote from: krisrr3 on September 03, 2023, 18:48:11 PMLet me take the time to understand how JArchi scripts work and create an MVP. Any guidance on documentation I should go through as a pre-requisite is appreciated.

The jArchi wiki is here - https://github.com/archimatetool/archi-scripting-plugin/wiki

But before you get into the technicalities of jArchi and plug-ins how will you "aggregate data from various sources"? As mentioned above perhaps you don't need an Archi plug-in or jArchi to do that.