[Question] Junction: omit arrowheads of relationships leading into a junction

Started by Xiaoqi, April 10, 2021, 19:10:41 PM

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Xiaoqi

Hello,

During reading Mastering ArchiMate book, a question pop up on View 26 "Collaboration through the use of Junction".

In Gerben's view, the junction is used linking 2 incoming Assignment and 1 outgoing Assignment, the "into" relation is drawn without arrowheads.

Checked with Gerben, he pointed to ArchiMate 3.1 Specification, section 5.5.1, as: "It is allowed to omit arrowheads of
relationships leading into a junction."

However, as attached file, when I try to redraw that in Archi tool, I cannot let the incoming arrowheads omit.

Gerben mentioned this would be some kinds of delta of our tool to the specification, shall I understand from forum here on the reason why we make this difference? Or is there any setting I didn't find to make it align with specification?

Thanks,
Xiaoqi

Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie

Hi,

This alternative notation is simply not implemented in Archi (btw this is not a mandatory requirement of ArchiMate).

Regards,

JB
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Phil Beauvoir

Quote from: Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie on April 10, 2021, 20:01:56 PM
Hi,

This alternative notation is simply not implemented in Archi (btw this is not a mandatory requirement of ArchiMate).

Regards,

JB

Indeed, but I think it should be possible to implement it in a future version of Archi as an option for connections going into junctions.
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Xiaoqi

Thanks JB and Phil for your clarification, good to know that requirement is not mandatory (just cannot see from the text directly in Specification, like 5.5.1 paragraph).

It would be nice to have this feature in future version, however, I think it's fine for now since the only impact is the "cleaner" view since the backend relation are still there and those are more important.

Regards,
Xiaoqi

Phil Beauvoir

Should displaying no arrow head on a connection that has a Junction as its  target be an option for:

1. The Junction instance?
2. The View?
3. The Model?

Also, when the Access relationship that is set to "Write" or "Read/Write" has no target arrow it looks like a "None" or "Read" variation.
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Xiaoqi

Thanks Phil, with your suggestion, I can use "Access relation" to visual a linkage from source element to the junction without an arrow now.

Just from the modeling aspect, we tend to use "Assignment relation" to describe the link from Business Role to Business Process for example, so I think we should keep using "Assignment" in the model inside and accept those arrows for now.

But, it's really good for building up the visualization to certain non-techi audience with your recommendation, so that we prevent unnecessary questions ;-)

Nice weekend,
Xiaoqi

Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie

Hi,

Quote from: xiaoqi
Thanks Phil, with your suggestion, I can use "Access relation" to visual a linkage from source element to the junction without an arrow now.

Phil was not suggesting to use access, he was thinking about the best way to implement it in Archi and pointed out a kind of edge case.

Quote from: Phil Beauvoir
Should displaying no arrow head on a connection that has a Junction as its  target be an option for:

It could be an Archi level preference that apply to all models, but it could also be set on a per visual object instance. In both case, this is only visual and not an attribute of the underlying model "element".

Quote from: Phil Beauvoir
Also, when the Access relationship that is set to "Write" or "Read/Write" has no target arrow it looks like a "None" or "Read" variation.

In fact there's an issue with junctions in the standard itself and thus in most tools: the junction should not be a real element, and thus the incoming an outgoing relationships are the same relationship. So when using access, the type (read/write) should be the same for the whole set of access, and thus what you describe should not be possible (e.g. if set to read and using the alternate/simplified notation: the first part of the access has no arrow, but the one connected to a passive structure will have one).

Last, from Xiaoqi example, it seems that Archi makes it possible to create an invalid relationship when using a junction (a role can not access a process, in fact nothing can access a process), In this case I thing there are only access going to the junction and no outgoing access from the junction, which should be considered invalid (at least in the validator, but IMHO also when saving the model).

Regards,

JB
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Phil Beauvoir

Sorry, JB, somehow I hit the "Modify" post instead of "Quote" and screwed up your post. I tried to put it back from a cached copy.
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Phil Beauvoir

> Last, from Xiaoqi example, it seems that Archi makes it possible to create an invalid relationship when using a junction (a role can not access a process, in fact nothing can access a process), In this case I thing there are only access going to the junction and no outgoing access from the junction, which should be considered invalid (at least in the validator, but IMHO also when saving the model).

I fixed it in Archi 4.8 so that invalid relations are not possible to create when using junctions. In Xiaoqi's example the Access relation goes from Business Process to Junction but is set to "Read".

Edit - I think I understand what you are saying. Setting the Access Relation to "Read" converts it to its opposite coming from the other direction. This makes the relationship rules more complicated. Will look at it (one day).
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Xiaoqi

Thanks both, looking forward to have the concept validated then.

However, just as discussed in https://forum.archimatetool.com/index.php?topic=997.0, in my daily work, I'm now try to use Junction not too much, since once we using analytics tool to examine the model including relationship, the junction in the middle create unclear source - destination relations ("too long path").

Regards, Xiaoqi