Documenting filter information

Hi,

are you aware that you can generate a report based on a filter? ARIS Business Architect is shipped with a report for this purpose. It outputs all information contained in the filter as a document. To start this report, do as follows:

• go to the administration module in ARIS Business Architect
• in the Navigation tree go to your server -> Configuration -> Conventions -> Filter
• right click the filter you want to document
• from the right click popup menu select Evaluate -> Start Report...
• select and run the "Output filter information" report

Regards,

Sebastian

 Hi Sebastian,

I am aware of this report, however it does not provide all the information required.

Maybe it is better to give some background information. Functional support maintains documentation about the methodology in Word and Excel files. Each model, object, relationship and attribute is described in convention documentation. The last year the methodology has been extended with new (derived) model types, objects and attributes, so maintaining this documentation has become too labour intensive and too complex. Result is that the documentation is not up to date with the filter.

At this moment we are investigating with our internal customers the requirements for documentation. There is a need for documentation about how to model for e.g. SOx or business rules. But good documentation about models, objects, symbols, relationships and attributes is still needed. Perhaps as a glossary of terms used.

As the methodology is available in ARIS itself it would be useful to add descriptions to it in the configuration, so that these conventions can be generated automatically or read into some database for publishing.

I hope this has clarified my initial question.

Regards,

Theo

Hi Theo,

now I see where you are heading to. Maybe you could use a second database to model your modelling convetions? There, you could annotate the objects with additional information and create a custom report to output those models as the method documentation.

Regards,

Sebastian

 Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for your reply.

I will try to find out how our filter database, for generating the filter, can be used for this purpose. And then create a custom report for this.

Regards,

Theo

Hi Theo,

I have also been trying to document our conventions and thought that ARIS itself may be a good place to do it. Initial results are promising and the document can be made widely available using business publisher. I am also building a database so that we can generate the filters, in fact I am trying to use one database to do both to avoid repetition and keep things integrated. There are some difficulties with this approach though because talking about methods involves using concepts that one does not want to allow in the filter. This is especially true when you descibe the logic behind rejecting certain approaches. I hope to solve the problem by keeping the pure filter models in a separate group so that they can be copied to another database when the time comes to create the filters. This approach also means that I can develop my easy filter as well as more advanced filters in the same database.

Sam

Hi Sam,

Thanks for your reply. We are using one database for generating filter and separate databases (used to work out changes in method, ProcessWeb or reports) where models, objects can be merged from after approval to implement the extended method.

I was also thinking of using ProcessWeb (specific implementation of Business Publisher) to publish conventions.

Best regards,

Theo