Major release features unique Roadmap Marker Diagram, sysML, OSLC Global Configurations, and bevy of usability enhancements
UNICOM Systems, Inc., a division of UNICOM Global, has announced a new major release of its market-leading architecture tool, System Architect 11.4.9. This release includes introduction of a Roadmap Marker diagram that matches the capabilities of leading roadmapping tools, support for the Global Configuration Management specification of the Open Service Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) integration standard, web drawing and dashboarding enhancements to SA XT – the web-browser sister tool – and a bevy of usability enhancements to rich-client System Architect. UNICOM Systems is also announcing its support for sysML – the systems modeling language – in this release of the software, introduced in a phased approach over the last year.
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Unique Roadmap Marker Diagram
The unique new Roadmap Marker diagrammer enables creation of time-based roadmaps for any artifact of an enterprise architecture – such as applications, application versions, systems, product versions, and capabilities. Users can easily build roadmaps that visualize time periods of an artifact, with milestones displayed on a customizable Gannt-like timeline.
The capabilities match that of leading roadmapping tools such as Aha!, but allow building of roadmaps within the context of the enterprise architecture. The support is provided for all popular frameworks such as DoDAF 2, TOGAF, and ArchiMate.
“Being able to formulate, visualize, and communicate when things will happen is an important activity of enterprise architects, project managers, and product managers,” said Lou Varveris, Director of Product Management at UNICOM Systems. “Using System Architect to build this diagram, using enterprise architecture data of any kind, is expressive and absolutely fun. Also in a data-centric architecture, the roadmap changes when the underlying data changes. So it’s a very powerful planning and communication mechanism.”
OSLC Global Configuration Management
This version of System Architect delivers phase 2 of support for the Global Configuration Management specification of Open Service Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC). OSLC is a REST standard managed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) that allows easy linking and traceability between artifacts of different types in different tools that subscribe to OSLC standards for Architecture Management, Requirements Management, and Change Management.
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Architects can link architecture elements in System Architect to the requirements that they satisfy in a tool such as IBM® DOORS®; the change request(s) that initiated a change to the architecture in a tool such as IBM® Engineering Workflow Manager (EWM, formerly RTC) and Altassian JIRA®; or the decisions made in tools such as UNICOM Focal Point™. Such cross-product links are extremely powerful for traceability – however the versions of the architecture, requirements, and change requests are constantly changing. Using global configurations, you can establish a configuration context across multiple tools, even when each tool stores its resources in otherwise unrelated configurations and repositories.
“OSLC helps bring enterprise architecture out of its silo,” added Mr Varveris. “It creates a federation of information across disparate tooling. It eliminates the need to move all information from everywhere else into the EA repository – you simply link to other tools that contain related information – whether it be requirements, change requests, or lower-level software or systems designs in another tool, or even another System Architect encyclopedia. But to get it right, you have to have Global Configuration of link management – because that information is possibly being versioned in each of the federated tools.”
SA XT for everyone
A guest user account can now be configured for System Architect’s thin web-browser sister tool, SA XT – so that anyone in an organization can gain read-only access to the live architecture via a web browser, without needing the SA administrator to set up individual user accounts for each person. This advances the ability to communicate the architecture across large organizations and have many people contribute to it.
The SA XT web product also features performance enhancements to large diagram opening, D3 charting enhancements for dashboards, and web GUI report builder enhancements.
sysML and UML 2.5
This version of System Architect provides the third phase of support for sysML 1.6. This support encompasses the entirety of the complex sysML metamodel, static diagram types such as Block Definition Diagrams (BDDs), Internal Block Diagrams, and Package Diagrams, and the dynamic Sequence Diagram with all of the sophisticated notations that sysML derives from UML 2.5. Also provided is new, detailed support for UML 2.5, the latest version of the Unified Modeling Language standard for software design. System Architect’s longstanding support for UML 2.0 is still available in the product, labeled UML 2 Lite. Models for sysML and UML 2.5 can be drawn in both rich-client System Architect and web-client SA XT. Additional information about the new sysML capabilities is available in a separate announcement.
Usability enhancements
This major release includes a bevy of usability enhancements for navigating the architecture, such as opening diagrams to multiple windows outside the frame of System Architect, the ability to zoom and scroll on its diagram preview window, and multiple enhancements to System Architect’s unique Explorer diagram that is used to analyze the enterprise architecture through visual reports and analytics. This version of System Architect also introduces the ability to auto-import csv files based on Windows scheduler.
“Building a successful enterprise architecture requires use of a standard framework, customizing the metamodel of that framework to match sources of record, being able to automatically import information from those sources of record, auto-visualize the information on model-driven diagrams, and then allow anyone in the organization to ask the architecture questions through easy reporting and analytics,” summarized Mr. Varveris. “Then comes time-based planning with future-state architectures, maintaining versions of the architecture, enabling the enterprise architects to work seamlessly with systems engineers and solution architects, and integrate the architecture with other endeavors like requirements management. Finally, the enterprise architecture tool needs to be easy to use with great graphics. System Architect continues to bring all of that to bear, and that is why we feel – and our customers feel – it is the best EA tool on the market.”
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