Keywords: Enterprise architecture, Historical analysis, Knowledge graph
Astract: Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the discipline that aims to provide a holistic view of the enterprise by explicating business and IT alignment from the perspectives of high-level corporate strategy down to daily operations and network infrastructures. EAs are consequently complex as they compose and integrate many aspects on different architecture layers. A recent proposal to cope with this complexity and to make EAs amenable to automated and intuitive visual analysis is the transformation of EA models into EA Knowledge Graphs. A remaining limitation of these approaches is that they perceive the EA to be static, i.e., they represent and analyze EAs at a single point in time. In the paper at hand, we introduce a historization concept, a prototypical implementation, and a performance analysis for how EAs can be represented and processed to enable the analysis of their evolution.

Keywords: DSL, EMF, Interoperability, Metamodeling, MSDKVS, Sirius
Astract: Many powerful metamodeling platforms exist, each with strengths, weaknesses, functionalities, programming language(s), and developer community. To exploit the mutual benefits of these platforms, it would be ideal to establish interoperability amongst them and the exchange of metamodels and models. This would enable language engineers to choose the metamodeling platform freely without risking a lock-in effect. Two well-documented and freely available metamodeling platforms are the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and Microsoft’s Modeling SDK for Visual Studio (MSDKVS). This paper proposes the first achievements toward establishing interoperability between EMF and MSDKVS on an abstract syntax level and a graphical concrete syntax level. To develop such interoperability, we i) comprehensively analyze the two platforms, ii) present a conceptual mapping between them, and iii) eventually implement a bidirectional transformation bridge. The transformed results’ validity, executability, and expressiveness are then quantitatively and qualitatively assessed by transforming a collection of publicly available metamodels.

Keywords: cyber-physical systems, digital twin, model-driven engineering, multi-paradigm modeling
Astract: Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are finding increasing use, whether in factories, autonomous vehicles, or smart buildings. Monitoring the execution of CPSs is crucial since CPSs directly influence their physical environment. Like the actual system, the monitoring application must be designed, developed, and tested. Mobile CPSs, in contrast to stationary CPSs, bring the additional requirement that instances can dynamically join, leave, or fail during execution time. This dynamic behavior must also be considered in the monitoring application. This paper presents CPSAML, a language and code generation framework for the model-driven development of mobile CPS systems, including a cockpit application for monitoring and interacting with such a system. The pipeline starts with the formulation of the system and the CPSs it contains at an abstract level by the system architect using a domain-specific modeling language. Next, this model is transformed into SysML 2 for further extension and richer specificity by system engineers on a more technical level. In the last step of the pipeline, the SysML 2 model is used to generate code for the CPS devices, a system-wide digital twin, and the cockpit application mentioned above. This cockpit enables the operator to configure and apply the monitoring and interaction with the system during runtime. We evaluate our CPSAML language and code generation framework on an Indoor Transport System case study with Roomba vacuum cleaner robots.

Keywords: Enterprise architecture, GEA method, Enterprise transformations
Astract: General Enterprise Architecting (GEA) is an enterprise architecture method which has emerged out of a need in practice, and has been developed and matured over the past 15 years. The GEA method differs from other enterprise architecture approaches in that it has a strong focus on enterprise coherence and the explicit governance thereof. This focus followed from the observed need to move beyond the Business-IT alignment and ‘Business-to-IT’ stack thinking that is embodied in most of the existing enterprise architecture approaches. The main objective of this paper is to report, and reflect on, the development of the GEA method (so-far), which involved a co-evolution between theory and practice. In doing so, we also present core elements of (the current version of) GEA, and illustrate these in terms of a real-world (social housing) case. We will, furthermore, also discuss some of the lessons learned in applying GEA across different organizations.

Keywords: Software Engineering, Language Server Protocol, GLSP
Astract: Conceptual modeling is widely adopted in industrial practices, e.g., process, software, and systems modeling. Providing adequate and usable modeling tools is essential for the efficient adoption of modeling. Metamodeling platforms provide a rich set of functionalities and maturely realize state-of-the-art modeling tools. However, despite their maturity and stability, most of these platforms only slowly - if at all - leverage the full extent of functionalities and the ease of exploitation and integration enabled by web technologies. With the Graphical Language Server Protocol (GLSP), it is now possible to realize much richer, advanced opportunities for visualizing and interacting with conceptual models. This paper presents a concept and a prototypical implementation of two advanced model visualization and interaction functionalities with the Eclipse GLSP platform: Semantic Zoom and Off-Screen Elements. We believe such advanced functionalities pave the way for a prosperous modeling future and spark innovation in modeling tool development.

Keywords: Enterprise Architecture, Knowledge Graph, Modeling tool, ArchiMate, Archi
Astract: Enterprise Architecture offers guidelines for the coherent, model-based design and management of enterprises. EA models provide a layered, integrated, and cohesive representation of the enterprise, enabling communication, analysis, and decision making. With the increasing size of EA models, automated analysis becomes essential. However, advanced model analysis is neither incorporated in current EA methods like ArchiMate nor supported by existing EA tools like Archi. Knowledge Graphs (KGs) can effectively organize and represent knowledge and enable reasoning to utilize this knowledge, e.g., for decision support. This paper introduces a model-based Enterprise Architecture Knowledge Graph (EAKG) construction method and shows how starting from ArchiMate models, an initially derived EAKG can be further enriched by EA-specific and graph characteristics-based knowledge. The introduced EAKG entails new representation and reasoning methods applicable to EA knowledge. As a proof of concept, we present the results of a first Design Science Research Cycle aiming to realize an Archi plugin for the EAKG that enables analysis of EA Smells within ArchiMate models.

Keywords: Code generation, Entity Relationship, Language Server Protocol, Modeling, Sprotty, Tool
Astract: This paper introduces the first major release of the bigER modeling tool. bigER offers various features for flexibly specifying and visualizing Entity Relationship (ER) data models. Within the Visual Studio (VS) Code IDE, the tool enables hybrid modeling through a textual editor and a graphical editor to display and modify the textual and graphical ER model, respectively. Both editors are realized with a custom language to specify ER elements and allow multi-notation support (currently Bachman, Chen, Crow’s Foot, Min-Max, and UML). The bigER modeling tool incorporates the Language Server Protocol and is based on web technologies, which makes the tool platform-independent and easily extensible. We present the newest extensions of bigER, i.e., multi-notation support and improved edge routing.

Keywords: Conceptual modeling, Enterprise Modeling

Keywords: Enterprise Architecture Management, Education, Survey
Astract: Enterprise architecture (EA), although matured in more than 30 years of ongoing research, receives more importance with the increasing dependency of business in IT and the growing complexity of IT systems. The integrated management of a companies’ goals, structures, and processes with respect to the business and IT elements, as well as the representation of impacts triggered by planned changes is educated in different ways at many universities all over the world. There are several techniques, methods, tools, and approaches to transfer the knowledge from the educators to the students, giving them the qualification to support their future employers in handling the EA challenges modern companies are facing. This work gives a detailed comparative analysis of more than twenty international educational offers regarding Enterprise Architecture Management, carves out the commonalities and finds two prototypical courses as a best-practice combining the strongest matches for Business Informatics and Computer Science studies alike.

Keywords: Conceptual Modeling, Design method, Enterprise Modeling, User orientation
Astract: Enterprise Modeling is far from its maximum potential. An important reason is that opposing stakeholder concerns lead to the existence of context-dependent models that are not mutually related, resulting in an inconsistent enterprise model landscape. This causes problems regarding unsustainable model utilization, since models are not used across different focal areas and over a longer period of time. The aim of our research project is to increase the value of Enterprise Modeling by creating a design method to support users in designing practically applicable models and a model integration method to integrate locally created models into an overarching enterprise model landscape that maintains model consistency.