ArchiMate® 3.1 Specification

The Open Group

• Publisher: Van Haren Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789401805148
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The ArchiMate® Specification, a standard of The Open Group, defines an open and independent modeling language for Enterprise Architecture that is supported by different tool vendors and consulting firms. The ArchiMate language enables Enterprise Architects to describe, analyze, and visualize the relationships among business domains in an unambiguous way. This book is the official specification of the ArchiMate 3.1 modeling language from The Open Group. This edition of the standard includes a number of corrections, clarifications, and improvements to the previous edition, as well as several additions.The main changes between Version 3.0.1 and Version 3.1 of the ArchiMate Specification are listed below. In addition to these changes, various other minor improvements in definitions and other wording have been made: •Introduced a new strategy element: value stream•Added an optional directed notation for the association relationship •Improved the organization of the metamodel and associated figures •Further improved and formalized the derivation of relationships The intended audience is threefold: 1.Enterprise Architecture practitioners, such as architects (e.g., business, application, information, process, infrastructure, and, obviously, enterprise architects), senior and operational management, project leaders, and anyone committed to work within the reference framework defined by the Enterprise Architecture. 2.Those who intend to implement the ArchiMate language in a software tool; they will find a complete and detailed description of the language in this book. 3.• The academic community, on which we rely for amending and improving the language, based on state-of-the-art research results in the Enterprise Architecture field.

1          Introduction

1.1 Objective

This standard is the specification of the ArchiMate Enterprise Architecture modeling language, a visual language with a set of default iconography for describing, analyzing, and communicating many concerns of Enterprise Architectures as they change over time. The standard provides a set of entities and relationships with their corresponding iconography for the representation of Architecture Descriptions. The ArchiMate ecosystem also supports an exchange format in XML which allows model and diagram exchange between tools [20].

1.2 Overview

An Enterprise Architecture is typically developed because key people have concerns that need to be addressed by the business and IT systems within an organization. Such people are commonly referred to as the “stakeholders” of the Enterprise Architecture. The role of the architect is to address these concerns by identifying and refining the motivation and strategy expressed by stakeholders, developing an architecture, and creating views of the architecture that show how it addresses and balances stakeholder concerns. Without an Enterprise Architecture, it is unlikely that all concerns and requirements are considered and addressed.

The ArchiMate Enterprise Architecture modeling language provides a uniform representation for diagrams that describe Enterprise Architectures. It includes concepts for specifying inter-related architectures, specific viewpoints for selected stakeholders, and language customization mechanisms. It offers an integrated architectural approach that describes and visualizes different architecture domains and their underlying relations and dependencies. Its language framework provides a structuring mechanism for architecture domains, layers, and aspects. It distinguishes between the model elements and their notation, to allow for varied, stakeholder-oriented depictions of architecture information. The language uses service-orientation to distinguish and relate the Business, Application, and Technology Layers of Enterprise Architectures, and uses realization relationships to relate concrete elements to more abstract elements across these layers.

1.3 Conformance

The ArchiMate language may be implemented in software used for Enterprise Architecture modeling. For the purposes of this standard, the conformance requirements for implementations of the language given in this section apply. A conforming implementation:

1. Shall support the language structure, generic metamodel, relationships, layers, cross-layer dependencies, and other elements as specified in Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

2. Shall support the standard iconography as specified in Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13, and summarized in Appendix A

3. Shall support the viewpoint mechanism as specified in Chapter 14

4. Shall support the language customization mechanisms as specified in Chapter 15 in an implementation-defined manner

5. Shall support the relationships between elements as specified in Appendix B

6. May support the example viewpoints described in Appendix C

Readers are advised to check The Open Group website for additional conformance and certification requirements referencing this standard.

1.4 Normative References

None.

1.5 Terminology

For the purposes of this standard, the following terminology definitions apply:

Can Describes a possible feature or behavior available to the user.

Deprecated Items identified as deprecated may be removed in the next version of this standard.

Implementation-defined

  Describes a value or behavior that is not defined by this standard but is selected by an implementor of a software tool. The value or behavior may vary among implementations that conform to this standard. A user should not rely on the existence of the value or behavior. The implementor shall document such a value or behavior so that it can be used correctly by a user.

May Describes a feature or behavior that is optional. To avoid ambiguity, the opposite of “may” is expressed as “need not”, instead of “may not”.

Obsolescent Certain features are obsolescent, which means that they may be considered for withdrawal in future versions of this standard. They are retained because of their widespread use, but their use is discouraged.

Shall Describes a feature or behavior that is a requirement. To avoid ambiguity, do not use “must” as an alternative to “shall”.

Shall not Describes a feature or behavior that is an absolute prohibition.

Should Describes a feature or behavior that is recommended but not required.

Will Same meaning as “shall”; “shall” is the preferred term.

1.6 Future Directions

None.

2 Definitions

For the purposes of this standard, the following terms and definitions apply. The TOGAF^® framework [4] should be referenced for Enterprise Architecture-related terms not defined in this chapter. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11^th Edition) should be referenced for all other terms not defined in this chapter.

Any conflict between definitions described here and the TOGAF framework is unintentional. If the definition of a term is specific to the ArchiMate modeling language, and a general definition is defined by the TOGAF framework, then this is noted in the definition.

2.1 ArchiMate Core Framework

A reference structure used to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Examples
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Trademarks
• Acknowledgements
• Referenced Documents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Definitions
• 3 Language Structure
• 4 Generic Metamodel
• 5 Relationships
• 6 Motivation Elements
• 7 Strategy Elements
• 8 Business Layer
• 9 Application Layer
• 10 Technology Layer
• 11 Physical Elements
• 12 Relationships Between Core Layers
• 13 Implementation and Migration Elements
• 14 Stakeholders, Architecture Views, and Viewpoints
• 15 Language Customization Mechanisms
• A Summary of Language Notation
• B Relationships (Normative)
• C Example Viewpoints
• D Relationship to Other Standards, Specifications, and Guidance Documents
• E Changes from Version 2.1 to Version 3.1
• Acronyms
• Index