Best way to enhance Archi with an integrated Data Dictionary

[michel.wicky]

I would like to enhance Archi with a Data Dictionary feature by using the Yourdon semantic which I consider excellent for capturing and translating needs (business and data objects, flows & documents) in terms of enterprise architecture.

I have no idea about the best way to realize the extension :
1) Eclipse ?
2) jArchi ?
3) Other ?

The first idea is to have an enhanced editor for a given properties into given archimate element (business object, application data object, artefact, flow, document)

The second issue is to determine where in the model we can store the definitions of the elements that compose the data dictionary (recursively up to elementary level).
That means that the properties value (the semantic) will refer to the data dictionary. The enhanced editor should be able to interpret the semantic and navigate the dictionary hierarchy to display the compositions and the definitions at elementary level.

Any idea or recommandations is welcome.

[Phil Beauvoir]

> The second issue is to determine where in the model we can store the definitions of the elements that compose the data dictionary

You could use Properties or the internal data storage called "Features" which uses the same name/value pairing. Your data dictionary could be stored as a table of Features. Note - jArchi does not currently have an API to access Features in their raw form, like Properties.

[michel.wicky]

That mean we have to extend jArchi to allow :

• accessing and use Features to create, get and update a Property from Properties
• accessing and use Features to create, get and store the Data Dictionary as a new specific Feature in Features
• find a way to extend the existing editing behavior to check Yourdon semantic and search/show elements from Data Dictionary when typing

Is it only an extend of jArchi or this include some extent into Eclipse (the editor by example).

[Phil Beauvoir]

I think to do all of that you really need to develop an Archi plug-in and have your own editor tab and store the data in features.

[Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie]

Hi,

I think to do all of that you really need to develop an Archi plug-in and have your own editor tab and store the data in features.

I think the same. The key thing is that there is no way to attached metadata to properties, so you'll have to write your own plugin which add a tab for this very specific purpose.

But I'm very interested because I also need to to some data management and I'd like to be able to do it with Archi ;-)

Regards,

JB

[Phil Beauvoir]

Just a heads up - one important rule for anyone developing an Archi plug-in that writes to the data model. Every action that acts upon the model must do so using the Command Stack (for Undo/Redo). This is one reason why we only expose certain commands in jArchi, so that they go through this command stack.