ARIS search capabilities

Hi,

for the latter Volker Eckardt wrote a script that lists all models within your database that have no assignment. see article http://www.ariscommunity.com/users/volker-eckardt/2010-06-02-free-charge-aris-report-validate-unassigned-models

Bruno

Hi Bruno,

Yes thanks I just found it. Any existing script for orphan objects?  

Hi.

I do not think that it is ARIS limied search capability and it is unstructured environment which ARIS used to model and unsertanity how search results will be presented.

You can have nice search capabilities in SQL database, but try to use SQL database to model relationships with different objects? This is what you pay for the luxury of having things modelled.

To be specific - sure, you need to write script based upon your functional specification because your search works on objects and their relationships. Sure, it could be good idea t have such script as built-in.

I am pretty sure that somebody has such code and will place it into this discussion.

In case of large database you should be ready for a long response time.

Sergei.

Yes, We love BPM.

Hi Sergei,

Thanks for your reply.

I was just pointing out that to me the embedded search engine of ARIS is quite poor.  The wizard does not allow you to do advanced searches (on relationship types for instance), you can't export your result in an excel sheet (or am I missing some point??), when there is a restriction on attributes you have to select the same rule "or" or "and" for all attributes, which is not always what you need.

Can you list all the objects "technical term" that are linked to a function using the relationship "creates"??

Maybe I'm not using this search engine properly.

I am not discussing the "unstructured environment" of ARIS and its obvious advantages compared to a SQL database.

I just think that the search engine could be equal to the tool. It would reduce the scripting efforts of users.

 Thanks,

Julien

I and many other users understand your expectations, however, take it this way, that for many years this never been an issue for ARIS users and they are HAPPY with the search engine in ARIS (which simply missing regular expressions and other usefull techniques).

Aris users are non-technical users. The problem of orphan objects which you are trying to eliminate can be easily solved by modelling conventions and semantic check. The problems which you have is a result of the way you had modelling organised. If you will put in place semantic check for every model produced by designers.

If you govern your process modelling and mapping properly - you could avoid the problems you are fighting with now.

The script to detect orphan objects is not obvious, because it requires collection of all objects, all object instances and validation that object doesn't have instances anywhere. For large databases this could be even impossible, cause script suppose to keep in memory very large amount of data.

That is why I am looking for solution to output ARIS data into SQL tables but looks like I am talking to the stones - nobody ever tried this or have any idea on how this can be achieved.

I will probably do this check on the databases (many of them) with thousands of models which I got in my hands recently. I do not see the value in this verification until we will develop procedures and processes what to do with such objects. The approach which I use will consists of the following steps: - run script to export ARIS object data with relationship - run external piece of code to analyse relationships - output report into the file with text strings for further search for orphan objects This is not urgent task for me, however, next weekend will be long weekend here and I could spend some time to have this problem solved.

Hi,

I'm not sure if you're looking for the 'orphaned objects' to delete them (and don't mean to sound insulting here) but, keep in mind that the database can be 'Reorganized' to automatically delete all 'orphaned objects.'

If you rather just want to find them, here's a simple report (not perfect but usable) that will show all occurrences of the selected objects. You can get this into Excel and filter for blanks and end up with a list of 'orphaned objects.' (I'm sure Volker can create a much more elegant report...he's awesome...this is just what I'm capable of without any programming skills.)

Best Regards,

Bob

Hi there,

Thanks for your comments.

Sergei, I do agree with you that solution is strict modelling governance; however, when you implement such a tool in a large company, that is, used by 50 documenters with different level of BP modelling knowledge, you end up with some rubbish that you need to clean up, even if we have implemented strict modelling conventions and trained all documenters with ARIS consultants.

Moreover we had to handle a complex data migration from our previous EA tool that has added a lot of rubbish to our ARIS Database.

Regarding the orphan script, we have internally developped something but it needs to be modified to do what I'd like so I was just looking for another solution. Computation time looks ok; on our database at least.

Regarding your SQL export, we've done something similar on our side. One of my colleagues exports his objects with relationships to excel and then load them into an access database. Analysis is much more flexible and powerful than using ARIS directly.

If you're interested I can ask him more about his work.

Rob, no we don't want to delete all these orphan objects as we are using library objects, that is; orphan objects that could potentially be used.

An occurence report sounds like a good idea using excel filters, however I had had a look at the standard report but I couldn't start the analysis from a folder, you need to select all objects which is impossbile on the whole database. 

I cannot figure out what your screen shot is actually. I'm using reports called "Output occurences (R3)" and "Output occurences of objects". Is that correct?

I would need a report where I can select a folder and then get a table with all objects and their occurences. Looks like this is the output of yours.

Thanks for your contribution,

Julien

Hi Julien,

The screen shot is of the WYSIWYG report generator (basically, it's a report I created). The way I use it is to first use the 'Find' functionality to search for all 'Person Type' objects. Then, highlight all objects in the results window and run the report from there, filtering the results as necessary.

The reports you mentioned could be used in the same fashion it's just that they offer so much more data than what is required and thus, more filtering of the final results.

Best Regards,

Bob

Hi Rob,

Ok thanks. Problem I'm facing is that "Output occurences of objects" does not output in excel format and "Output occurences (R3)" outputs in excel but is not very convenient, its creates a new tab for each function so I cannot apply any filter.

Could you share your report or is it like company copyrighted?

Thanks a lot,

Julien

Hi Julien,

re your initial questions: did you try only the find dialog's first tab? (Search for models or objects by name and attributes)

Or do you refer to the 2nd tab "Queries"? (I hope it is named like that, I don't use the English version) There you will indeed find only a limited selection of queries delivered with setup.

But by means of ABArchitect > module administration > Queries you can define further queries for all users of your Business Server.

re how to use the resulting list of found items: As pointed out by Rob you can execute reports or open properties dialogs from every item in the list. But to my surprise you can even copy & paste all items via clipboard into any other application like spreadsheets.

Hope that helps, Martin