The Essential Project Forum

Hey Guys,

we just started testing the essential project with the new version 5 now -> we telcoed in january, do you remember?

My Question: How can i change the standard meta-model?
Lets say, what do i have to do in order to just have business functions, linked to services supporting these functions, linked to applications providing these services, linked to technologies on which the applications run.

Thanks for help and regards from Germany
Tim

Hi Tim,

Great to hear from you.

You can make any changes that you require by enabling the "Classes" tab in Protege. From there you can make new classes and new relationships between those.

Before you do, it is worth checking out what is already in the meta model. Precisely what you describe is already there in our meta model. It is most likely a mis-match in terminology at this stage - part of getting to know the Essential Meta Model.

Jonathan

Thanks for the help.

Next challenge: how to integrate mutual dependencies?

Metamodel example: one business process is supported by many application services and one application service supports many business processes.

Instances: I have created a process p1 and the application services s1, s2 and s3.

Question: Is the following possible - and how:
When modeling s1 and s2 as supporting application services in the instance editor of p1, the application services s1 and s2 are automatically connected with p1 in their instance editors (they have automatically p1 under "Supports Business Processes").

Regards,
Tim

Hi Tim,

This is definitely possible - Business Processes can be supported by multiple Application Services and each Application Service can support multiple Business Processes.

In the Essential Meta Model, we use a relationship class to create this link between the Business Process and the Application Service. This relationship class enables us to capture further information about the nature of that relationship, e.g. criticality (of the Application Service to that Process) and service qualities (you can capture as many as you need) that describe things like performance, capacity, scalability etc.

In the repository, you can define this from either direction - process or service. Protege will partially complete the relationship class from whichever end you approach this, e.g. if you start with a process, the Business Process slot will be populated leaving you to simply choose which Application Service is supporting that process.

To meet your need to define multiples, you simply have multiple instances of this relationship type in the “Supports Business Processes” slot on Application Service or “Supporting Application Services” slot on Business Process.

In your example, I can go to P1, scroll to the “Supporting Application Services” slot and create a NEW instance for the connection to S1 and then a second NEW instance for the connection to S2.

If you then navigate to S1 you will see the connection to P1 in the "Supports Business Processes" slot. Similarly, on S2, you will see a connection to P1 in its "Supports Business Processes" slot.

Jonathan