The Information and Data Pack provides a powerful extension to the baseline meta model to support Enterprise Information and Enterprise Data Management activities in addition to Information Architecture, Data Architecture activities. See the Introduction to the Information and Data Pack Tutorial for more information.

Release Date

3 June 2011

New Meta Classes

The following classes have been introduced to the meta in the Information and Data pack:

• Data Subject. Provides a new conceptual-level class for managing and or grouping Data Objects by what the Data Object represents, e.g. Product, Customer.
• Data Object. Upper logical-level class for capturing how data is designed, in terms of attributes, and specific semantics. e.g. Product Item, Bill of Materials.
• Data Object Attribute. Upper logical-level class that captures the attributes of a Data Object.
• Primitive Data Object. Upper logical-level class to define the primitive types for attributes, such as Integer, String, Float, Boolean. A standard set of instances are provided but the set of Primitive Data Objects can be extended by adding new instances.
• Data Representation. Lower logical-level class that captures how Data Objects are represented in the enterprise, such as data structures used in specific applications. e.g. Bill of Materials in OurEuropeanSAP
• Data Representation Attribute. Lower logical-level class that captures how attributes (linked to Data Object Attributes) are represented in specific Data Representations.
• Physical Data Object. Physical-level class for capturing the physical data that is being stored in an Information Store.
• Issue. New class added to the Strategy Management section of the meta model for capturing Issues about one or more EA elements in the repository. Relationships to Strategic Plans provides the ability to capture how that issue is planned to be resolved.

Enumerations

The following new Enumeration classes have been added:

• Application Delivery Model. Captures the set of possible models for delivering applications, e.g. Hosted, SaaS, On-site.
• Issue Category. Provides the ability to define a set of categories for managing instances of the Issue class.
• Data Category. Provides the ability to define categories of data, such as Master Data, Transactional Data or Reference Data.
• Data Attribute Cardinality. User-extensible set of cardinalities that can be applied to Data Attributes, e.g. one-or-more, zero-or-more or single.
• Data Acquisition Method. User-extensible set of instances that define how data is gathered, in particular in data integration between applications, e.g. Messaging, Manual Data Entry or Batch File.

Utilities

The following new Utilities classes have been added:

• Service Quality Measure. Re-named Service_Quality_Usage to improve clarity of semantics.
• Information Service Quality. Class for capturing types of service qualities about Information instances.
• Information Service Quality Measure. Class for capturing the specific values for types of service quality applied to specific instances from the Information Layer.

Relationship Classes

The following new relationship classes have been added to the meta model.

• APP_TO_INFO_RELATION. New abstract class (no instances of this class can be defined) for defining how Application elements interact with Information elements.
• APP_PRO_TO_INFOREP_RELATION. Relationship class that manages the relationship between Application Providers and the Information Representations that are used by it, in terms of CRUD and persistence.
• APP_PRO_TO_INFOREP_TO_DATAREP_RELATION. Relationship class that describes the specific Data Representation that is used by an Application Provider in the context of its relationship to a specific Information Representation.
• BUSPROCTYPE_TO_INFOVIEW_RELATION. Relationship class to describe the Information Views that are used by a Business Process, Activity or Task.
• PHYSBUSPROC_TO_APPINFOREP_RELATION. Relationship class that captures an organisation performing a business process using the information provided by an application.

Updated Meta Classes

The following meta classes have been updated in the Information and Data Pack.

• EA Class. A new slot has been added to the base class for all elements in the meta model to define synonyms for an instance.
• Business Capability. New slots added to help manage the suite of Business Capabilities, such as an ID, level (of detail) and purpose. The presentation of the Business Capability name (Browser Text, in Protege terms) has been updated to make use of the ID to help with organising large lists of Business Capabilities. The form layout has been revised to accommodate the new slots.
• Business Process Type. Revised form layout to deprecate the old process-to-information relationships.
  • Business Process. Revised form layout and deprecated direct create, read, update, delete relationships to Information Views.
  • Business Activity. New slot to Physical Activity class introduced plus revised form layout and deprecated direct create, read, update, delete relationships to Information Views.
  • Business Task. Revised form layout and deprecated direct create, read, update, delete relationships to Information Views.

• Actor. Added an Issue slot to define the known issues for an Actor.
  • Group Actor. Form layout revised to accommodate new, inherited slot.
  • Individual Actor. Form layout revised to accommodate new, inherited slot.

• Physical Process Type. New slots added to define relationship to the information that is used by a Physical Process plus a revised form layout.
  • Physical Business Process. New slots added to define relationship to the information that is used by a Physical Process plus a revised form layout.
  • Physical Activity. New slots added to define relationship to the information that is used by a Physical Process plus a revised form layout. Additionally, the cardinality of the relationship to the Actor Role performing the process has been changed to '1'.

• Application Provider Type. New slot added to manage the relationship to Information Representations that are used by Application instances.
  • Application Provider. Existing 'operates on Information Representation' slot is deprecated and replaced by the 'Information Used' relationship. This is now a relationship class, rather than a direct relation, that enables the CRUD and data dependencies to be managed. New slot added to manage known issues with the Application Provider.
  • Composite Application Provider. Inherits the above changes from the Application_Provider class.
  • Application Function Implementation. Existing Creates/Reads/Updates/Deletes Information slots are deprecated and replaced by the 'Uses Information' slot.
  • Application Deployment. Slot managing the relationship to Information Stores has been updated to be a direct relationship to the relevant Information Store, replacing the existing Information Store Usage.

• Information Concept. New slots to manage relationships to the supporting Data Subjects and known issues for an Information Concept.
• Information View. Existing Created/Read/Updated/Deleted slots deprecated. New slots to manage the relationships to the Data Objects that support the View, known issues with the View and slots to manage the local and fully-qualified name of the View.
• Information View Attribute. New slots to manage the definition of the attribute in terms of how it is derived from data, the relationships to the relevant Data Attributes.
• Information Representation. Existing Created/Read/Updated/Deleted slots are deprecated and replaced by a new slot managing instances of Information Representation to Application Provider relationships. New slot for managing known issues with an Information Representation.
• Information Representation Attribute. The Information Representation Attribute is deprecated. Definitions of attributes of Information Representations are managed at the Information View level, using Information View Attributes.
• Information Store. New slots added to manage the service qualities of the information store and known issues with a specific information store.

• Enumeration. New slots added, as contributed by Kevin Campbell to manage an icon and additional commentary for any enumeration value.

Utilities

• Service_Quality_MetaClass. Renamed to the more appropriate Service_Quality_Measure.
• Service_Quality_Usage. Renamed to the more appropriate Service_Quality_Value.
• Application_Service_Quality_Usage. Renamed to the more appropriate Application_Service_Quality_Value.
• Technology_Service_Quality_Usage. Renamed to the more appropriate Technology_Service_Quality_Value.

Relationship Classes

• :APU-TO-APU-STATIC-RELATION. Updated to add slots to manage the Information that is exchanged between Applications, how the information is exchanged and the Information Service Qualities for the exchange of information.

Migration Script

The installer includes a migration script to migrate existing Information instances and relationships to the new Information and Data Pack. This migration script handles existing, deprecated relationships, rebuilding them without removing them to aid troubleshooting with the migration.

Views

The following Views are added to Essential Viewer in this pack:

Catalogues

• Data Catalogue by Name
• Data Catalogue by Type
• Information Catalogue by Domain
• Information and Data Catalogue by Application

Drill Downs

• Data Object Summary
• Data Subject Summary
• Data Provider Model
• Information View Summary
• Application Information and Data Summary
• Application Dependencies Model