extension

Started by GandalfPN, April 11, 2015, 23:28:59 PM

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GandalfPN

@ Phil Beauvoir

Hello Phil ... We did discuss years ago and at that time I think I had the same "request" :

Is it possible to extend Archi ? Meaning adding new concepts and relationships to the « meta » of Archi such that we get these new concepts and rels within existing palette (with their symbols) and defined in view editors ...

On the same track but one step further. Could we envision having a « meta-Archi » editor in which we would specify and edit the meta (for example, today we could have the archimate model edited within that layer) and from which we could generate a tool (or an extension to an existing tool).

The palette within the top abstract layer would be a set of concepts (the definition of the concepts and rels of the meta model (e.g. archimate model in the case of Archi)) and connectors. In that layer we would have a concept editor for defining the characteristics of the concept, a graphical symbol editor for specifying the appearance of the concept, and at least a graphical grammar editor for specifying the allowed connections between concepts (just like the archimate relationships table in archi). From there we would be able to generate tools aligned with the framework/method implied by its metamodel

This is not rocket science and could probably be done depending on the actual architecture of archi. But let's start simple : my first and currently important question is :
Is it possible to extend Archi ? Meaning adding new concepts and relationships to the « meta » of Archi such that we get these new concepts and rels within existing palette (with their symbols) and defined in view editors ...

Thanks in advance for accepting a possible discussion on this and for replying to my question

Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie

Hi,

As of today, you can extend the model but through some development (and this means that people working with/using your models have to have that custom Archi version). This is still documented on the old/legacy website.

Regarding a real "meta" editor, this could theoretically be achieved using "Dynamic EMF" (invoking code generation at runtime) but this would need to do a lot of rework to have those new elements displayed in a diagram (the code to draw figures is not dynamic).

Depending on what you want to achieve, maybe sometihng like Sirius may be a good solution (but it's no more Archi).

Regards,

JB
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Phil Beauvoir

Hi,

yes this is possible, but requires some work. Biggest issue comes when you want to share the extended model and metamodel with others - do they have the same version as you? At what point does it cease to be an ArchiMate metamodel.

(I took down the instructions on how to do this on the website for a reason. People were extending the meatamodel with all kinds of crazy stuff and wanting me to implement it).
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