Reuse of Technology Product Architecture

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walkermic
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Jan 2019, 17:51

How do I create reusable Technology Product Architectures? The documentation only shows how to do it when going from a Technology Build Architecture. When you do that it creates a Technology Product Architecture named specifically for the higher level Technology Build Architecture. What I want to do is build reusable Technology Product Architectures that are maybe called something like "Oracle on AIX" and then link those to all the Technology Build Architectures that use that same model. However, when I try to build a Technology Product Architecture, I can't create the name. It auto populates with "::Product_Architecture" which make's it unusable when linking back to a Technology Build Architecture.

It seems like the only way to be able to link the Technology Build Architecture is to use the GUI editor. Instead I just want to create a base Technology Product Architecture and then reference it from the Technology Build Architecture.
essential1.png
How can I do this?
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jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Hi,

The Technology Product Architecture and Technology Build Architecture are designed to model different things.

It sounds to me like you should be using the Technology Build Architecture to describe a Technology Build, e.g. “Oracle on AIX”, to describe the Oracle database, IBM AIX operating system etc. that are used in that build.

The Technology Product Build is a composite of one or more Technology Products. As a subclass of Technology Provider, you can use these builds / composites interchange-ably with individual products.

The idea is that you can define a Technology Product Build as a ‘black box’ by creating a Technology Product Build and then to describe the components of that build and their inter-dependencies using the Technology Build Architecture. The individual products that are used in this Technology Product Build are related to it, as you say, via the Technology Build Architecture.

The Technology Product Architecture addresses a different perspective - enabling you to define the pre-requisites that must be met before you can use a particular product. e.g. to use a BizTalk platform, I need to ensure that a database is available to manage the integration configurations. I can define a Technology Product Architecture for BizTalk and model the dependency that it has on a relational database. Within that database element, I can then describe the products that are supported by BizTalk and, in addition, those products that are NOT supported by BizTalk.

To resolve the issue that you cannot link the Technology Build Architecture to the product:
  • Define a new Technology Product Build (sub-class of Technology Provider), e.g. “Oracle on AIX”
  • Create a new Technology Build Architecture from the relevant attribute of your new Product Build
  • Add the Technology Providers that you require to the diagram. Note that you can use either individual products (e.g. Oracle 12) or other Technology Product Builds (other composites). NOTE: you will be defining not only the Technology Provider but how it is to be used - via a Technology Product Role instance - at this point. This enables us to understand that we are, e.g. using Oracle 12 as a RDBMS or Oracle 12 as a J2EE application server, in this build.
  • You can also define dependencies between the elements in this Technology Build Architecture, e.g. “Oracle 12 depends on AIX”
Views etc. will navigate these relationships between the Technology Build Architectures and the Product used in them to display the dependencies.

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
walkermic
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Jan 2019, 17:51

I realize that probably makes perfect sense to you, but I'm completely lost. I need pictures. I walked through the steps you had. I need the link to the application as I'm working on the Application Technology Strategy Alignment view which I have working, but can't get the reusability part working.
JohnM
Posts: 467
Joined: 17 Feb 2009, 20:19

Hi,

I presume you’ve followed the Application Technology Strategy Alignment video here https://enterprise-architecture.org/howto.php so you have your technologies tied to the applications. This gives you the foundation of the view.

To add the standards,

You should have a set of Technology Product Roles, e.g Microsoft::Azure SQL Services::as::Relational Database. This has associated a Technology Provider, e.g. Microsoft::Azure SQL Services and Technology Component, e.g. Relational Database – we are saying this technology is playing this role, Microsoft::Azure SQL Services is acting as a Relation Database

On the Technology Product Role you can set the Lifecycle Status

To set the standard, navigate to EA_Support > Standards_Management > Technology_Standards_Management > Technology_Provider_Standard_Specification and, in the Standard Technology Provider Role slot, choose the Technology Product Role. In the Standard Strength slot select the standard strength. Note: If you have imported using Launchpad v3 then these will be set to Mandatory, Permitted, Recommended or Waiver Required. If you haven’t used Launchpad then create those.

Hope that helps

John
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