UML 1.4 Class diagram migration from 7.x to v.10.x dilema

Hello Radek,

you manouvered yourself into a real mess here. First thing to understand: UML 1.4 and UML 2.x are two very distinct standards, just like BPMN 1.x and 2.0, so your decision to migrate from UML 1.4 to 2.5 should be taken independently from the ARIS migration from 7.x to 10.x. UML 2.x was available already in ARIS 7.x with the ARIS UML Designer licence. And it still is in 10.x, currently supporting the most up-to-date 2.5 standard.

UML 1.4 dates back to the 90s. It was supported as ARIS symbols in UML style. With UML 2.x the ARIS product "UML Designer" supports the full UML metamodel and delivers you probably one of the most complete UML 2.5 implementations in the market. ARIS Architect can display the UML 2 content of ARIS UML Designer, but it cannot edit it. However ARIS Archtect still supports the old UML 1.4 model types that you are used to.

There is a feature supporting the UML migration from 1.4 to 2.x - as I mentioned, very few people use UML 1.4 nowadays because it is very outdated. And this migration has got nothing to do with the ARIS migration to 10.x. This is apparently the one you chose to use. Now your content is converted to UML packages according to the UML 2 paradigm and you need the UML Designer to work with it. In UML Designer you can configure mappings from UML classes to ARIS objects in order to keep them in sync, so that would be the way to integrate UML content and ARIS content.

To sum it up: If you did not plan to migrate from UML 1.4 to UML 2.5, you shouldn't have done so - it requires planning and UML Designer licences to be able to work with the UML 2 content. That's not an issue of the 7.x to 10.x migration. It's a migration you even could have done 10 years ago within ARIS 7 by purchasing the UML Designer client product.

You have 2 options:

• Re-do the content migration without UML migration, then extract the UML 1.4 content to your current migrated databases.
• Purchase UML Designer licences and quickly learn to modernize your UML modelling approach with UML 2.5

Hello M. Zschuckelt,

I know that UML 1.4 is outdated nowadays, but it was very much serving the purpose we need. Have the ability to create simple class diagrams with cardinalities and named associations and use the same object in both class diagrams and process models.

I didn't want to upgrade to UML 2.5, but there was not an option to go from ARIS 7 to ARIS 10 without such conversion. I have added a screenshot of the message I got when I tried to open the UML 1.4 model in ARIS 10 after the DB got migrated from ARIS 7.

I am attaching the message I got from ARIS, the way I read it is that if you want to use your old ARIS 7 class diagram in ARIS 10,  you have to convert it to UML 2.5. It doesn't even indicate that it is possible to move to ARIS 10 without migration to UML 2.5.

As you mention that we could have done the migration to UML 2 ten years ago. Of course, we were discussing it those days quite a lot. But what we would gain:

• need to maintain two sets of Business Objects one in UML Designer and one in Architect instead of one set
• spend extra amount of money on additional UML Designer licenses
• have full UML 2 features we didn't need those day same as today, as we are fine with UML 1.4

And if you say that UML 1.4—>2.5 is not the issue of migration of ARIS 7 to ARIS 10, I say yes, because the UML 1.4 models from ARIS 7 are simply not converted into ARIS 10 UML 1.4 by migration script. Shame on me that I have not tested if UML models would open after migration in ARIS 10.

Okay, so that is a different case. The message claims that you created those UML 1.4 diagrams in ARIS UML Designer 7.x. Then indeed at some point it may be necessary to do the UML 2 migration when upgrading UML Designer. My assumption was that you used the ARIS UML 1.4 models.

So I suppose you would have had UML Designer licences in ARIS 7.x already. I am not really sure which 7.x version you are migrating from and which was the UML version supported by that UML Designer version.

I would suggest you contact support. If you used to have UML Designer licences in 7.x then you probably can get the upgrade to the 10.x version with your maintenance contract. Things might be more complicated depending on the exact circumstances of your contractual situation and history.