Recently, Ada and Simon started the development of an ontology for Enterprise Architecture (EA) Debt. It delves into the nuances
Naturally, with the increasing complexity of the modeled system under study, also the complexity of the model itself increases. Although EA modeling is widely adopted in industry and much research is conducted in the field, the analysis of EA models is surprisingly underrepresented. Generally, two analysis approaches can be distinguished: manual and automated. Given the discussed complexity of EA models, manual analysis can be error-prone. Automated model analysis can mitigate this problem by scaling well and by providing interactive analysis means that extend static ones.
We analyze automatically and efficiently even large EA models with the aim to detect EA Smells. Generally, a smell describes a qualitative issue that effects future efforts (e.g., maintenance) and not the functionality. While Code Smells analyze source code, EA Smells analyze an organization from a more holistic point of view and go beyond a technical scope.
To allow the analysis of other EA models than ArchiMate and to realize a scalable approach, we generalize the EA model to a Knowledge Graph (KG) and provide queries representing respective EA Smells. Hence, the detection of EA Smells can be applied to all EA models, which can be represented as a KG. We propose a generic and extensible platform that facilitates the transformation of EAs into KG representations. The platform can be easily extended to support further modeling languages. Once a transformation is realized, the existing EA Smells queries can be efficiently executed even on very large models and model corpora.
The core platform (see figure above) allows the transformation of ArchiMate models into graph structures. We enhance this platform with the capability to transform EA models conforming to the Open Group Exchange format to a KG. Further, we enhanced the platform by means of semantic queries to automatically detect EA Smells.
Bråtfors, Robin; Hacks, Simon; Bork, Dominik
Historization of Enterprise Architecture Models Via Enterprise Architecture Knowledge Graphs Proceedings Article
In: Barn, Balbir S.; Sandkuhl, Kurt (Ed.): The Practice of Enterprise Modeling. PoEM 2022, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2022.
@inproceedings{nokey,
title = {Historization of Enterprise Architecture Models Via Enterprise Architecture Knowledge Graphs},
author = {Robin Bråtfors and Simon Hacks and Dominik Bork},
editor = {Balbir S. Barn and Kurt Sandkuhl},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-21488-2_4},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-11-30},
urldate = {2022-11-30},
booktitle = {The Practice of Enterprise Modeling. PoEM 2022},
volume = {456},
publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
address = {Cham},
series = {Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing},
abstract = {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 = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Hacks, Simon; Smajevic, Muhamed; Bork, Dominik
Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells (Extended Abstract) Proceedings Article
In: Leopold, Henrik; Proper, Henderik A. (Ed.): EMISA 2022, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. 2022.
@inproceedings{nokey,
title = {Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells (Extended Abstract)},
author = {Simon Hacks and Muhamed Smajevic and Dominik Bork},
editor = {Henrik Leopold and Henderik A. Proper},
url = {https://dl.gi.de/bitstream/handle/20.500.12116/40217/EMISA2022-05.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-06-05},
urldate = {2022-06-05},
booktitle = {EMISA 2022},
number = {5},
organization = {Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Smajevic, Muhamed; Hacks, Simon; Bork, Dominik
Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells Proceedings Article
In: Serral, Estefanía; Stirna, Janis; Ralyté, Jolita; Grabis, Jānis (Ed.): The Practice of Enterprise Modeling, pp. 48–63, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2021, ISBN: 978-3-030-91279-6.
@inproceedings{10.1007/978-3-030-91279-6_4,
title = {Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells},
author = {Muhamed Smajevic and Simon Hacks and Dominik Bork},
editor = {Estefanía Serral and Janis Stirna and Jolita Ralyté and Jānis Grabis},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-91279-6_4},
isbn = {978-3-030-91279-6},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-11-15},
urldate = {2021-11-15},
booktitle = {The Practice of Enterprise Modeling},
pages = {48--63},
publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
address = {Cham},
abstract = {Hitherto, the concept of Enterprise Architecture (EA) Smells has been proposed to assess quality flaws in EAs and their models. Together with this new concept, a catalog of different EA Smells has been published and a first prototype was developed. However, this prototype is limited to ArchiMate and is not able to assess models adhering to other EA modeling languages. Moreover, the prototype is not integrate-able with other EA tools. Therefore, we propose to enhance the extensible Graph-based Enterprise Architecture Analysis (eGEAA) platform that relies on Knowledge Graphs with EA Smell detection capabilities. To align these two approaches, we show in this paper, how ArchiMate models can be transformed into Knowledge Graphs and provide a set of queries on the Knowledge Graph representation that are able to detect EA Smells. This enables enterprise architects to assess EA Smells on all types of EA models as long as there is a Knowledge Graph representation of the model. Finally, we evaluate the Knowledge Graph based EA Smell detection by analyzing a set of 347 EA models.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Smajevic, Muhamed; Bork, Dominik
From Conceptual Models to Knowledge Graphs: A Generic Model Transformation Platform Proceedings Article
In: Ghose, Aditya; Horkoff, Jennifer; Souza, Vitor E. Silva; Parsons, Jeffrey; Evermann, Joerg (Ed.): 40th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, Springer Springer, LNCS, 2021.
@inproceedings{TUW-297029,
title = {From Conceptual Models to Knowledge Graphs: A Generic Model Transformation Platform},
author = {Muhamed Smajevic and Dominik Bork},
editor = {Aditya Ghose and Jennifer Horkoff and Vitor E. Silva Souza and Jeffrey Parsons and Joerg Evermann},
url = {https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_297029.pdf},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-11-01},
urldate = {2021-11-01},
booktitle = {40th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling},
publisher = {Springer, LNCS},
organization = {Springer},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Smajevic, Muhamed; Bork, Dominik
From Conceptual Models to Knowledge Graphs: A Generic Model Transformation Platform Proceedings Article
In: 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems Companion (MODELS-C) – Tools & Demonstrations Track, ACM/IEEE IEEE Xplore Digital Library, USA, 2021.
@inproceedings{TUW-297025,
title = {From Conceptual Models to Knowledge Graphs: A Generic Model Transformation Platform},
author = {Muhamed Smajevic and Dominik Bork},
url = {https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_297025.pdf},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-01-01},
urldate = {2021-01-01},
booktitle = {2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems Companion (MODELS-C) - Tools & Demonstrations Track},
publisher = {IEEE Xplore Digital Library},
address = {USA},
organization = {ACM/IEEE},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Recently, Ada and Simon started the development of an ontology for Enterprise Architecture (EA) Debt. It delves into the nuances