Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
are many more UML tools, such as PatternWeaver, with which readers can
work on ODP modelling. However, readers are advised to consult with their
tool vendors to see what plug-ins are available.
Many of the groups producing standards or other specifications maintain
lists of known products using them, and these lists are a fruitful source of
information about potential tool vendors and relevant groups in the open
source community. Tool vendors usually implement standards enhanced with
their own capabilities, look and feel and other special features to appeal to
their customers.
The open source community is a place where interested people get together
to implement something of common interest to them. In the case of UML and
the UML prole, OMG's UML page (
http://www.uml.org/
) and MDA page
(
http://www.omg.org/mda/
) are good starting places to find such tool ven-
dors. As a good example of an open source community, you can look at the
Eclipse foundation (
http://www.eclipse.org/
). Within the Eclipse commu-
nity, there is specific support for the creation of modelling tools in the form
of the Eclipse Modelling Framework [55]. There are various implementations
in the Eclipse modelling projects (
http://www.eclipse.org/modeling/
), in-
cluding a UML 2 tooling project. You can also find implementations of dif-
ferent modelling styles.
16.5
Comparing Enterprise Architectures
A number of proposals for architectural frameworks have been made in
recent years; they all target the design and evolution of enterprise systems.
However, they are not easy to compare because they differ in their individual
scope and emphasis. This implies that each has its own areas of strength and
weakness.
We can divide the proposals into two groups. First, we have those frame-
works that aim to classify all the different artefacts, processes and people
involved in the specification of the enterprise system and its contents. The
earliest example of this style is the Zachman framework [94]. This was pro-
duced in the late 1980s and introduced the idea of an architectural framework,
which soon became popular.
The Zachman framework provides systematic guidance for organizing the
contents of an enterprise architecture and is often used to represent a portfolio
of the existing architecture artefacts within an organization. It has evolved
through several different revisions, which all use a two-dimensional matrix
to offer a taxonomy of architectural elements and processes; depending on
the version, this requires choices to be made between as many as 36 matrix
cells. However, it focuses on the categorization of the enterprise architecture
