Hi Magnus, Thanks for your post. I'm going to have to take this up with the Protege team, so can you give me a copy of the exception message that you're getting, please? In Protege 3.4, the database backend has been re-implemented completely (for the better) but maybe somethings have changed - I've ...

Just to let you know that I have just brought this code into the core Essential Viewer code. Thanks again for your contribution - it works a treat.

Jonathan

Hi Karl, Great to hear that you've got everything running now. You can set up the collaboration panel (which tracks all changes etc. to the repository) either before or after you setup your repository to run in the database such as MySQL. I would recommend that if you do want to use the Collaboratio...

Hi Karl, Sorry to take so long to get back to you. First, I just want to make sure I understand where you are in the setup process. It sounds like you are installing in multi-user mode and have got as far as running the Protege server but when you try to connect to the server and open a project, tha...

Just to let you know that I have started the ECP for this - ECP-4 Strategy Management

Apologies for the delay in getting this going but we should have a sample repository available shortly for this ECP to explore what we have defined and see how that meets the requirements.

Jonathan

ECP-4 upgrades the Strategy Management part of the Essential Meta Model to provide support for defining and managing Architecture States in the repository. An Architecture State is a grouping of elements from the Essential Repository that are linked in that they all exist in a particular state of th...

Firstly - apologies for the delay in getting back to you on this. Sounds like you are doing some very interesting modelling. We have modelled just this sort of thing ourselves and encountered just this issue. After some deliberation, we realised that it is important to recognise that Web Services (t...

Thanks for this very interesting question. The approach described in the tutorial also applies to things like virtual servers, so you would create a node that is actually a virtual server and deploy software to it in the normal fashion and of course, such virtual nodes are contained in the physical ...

As an alternative (and one that I have been using with a client for some time now for integration with a CMDB in a similar way to that which you describe), you can put a simple report together in the Essential Viewer. You can then use this report to manually pull or even have a scheduled job request...

A candidate release for this meta model extension is ready to be downloaded and evaluated. Download the meta model extension and the sample repository (with this extension applied) from the Share area. Meta Model Sample repository The meta model extension is a Protege Script Tab script that you shou...

Just to let you know, I've posted a meta model update and sample repository to add this feature in ECP-3

Jonathan

Thanks for the update - good news that you've resolved the problem. By the way, the credentials are there so that you can use the user name and password to control who is authorised to publish models to the Essential Viewer. However, you may not need this, especially if you are working in a stand-al...

Hi Kari, First thing to check is that the server.xml in Tomcat has been set to remove the HTTP POST size limit. This is described in the installation guides, setting the maxPostSize property as follows: <Connector port="8080" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150" mi...

Sorry, my mistake. A Business Activity defining flow cannot contain sub-activities, only tasks - which makes sense given the definition that an Activity is performed by one person, one place, one time. Apologies for the confusion, I should have checked the meta model documentation. :oops: Jonathan

Here is the proposed meta model extension for ECP-3.1 This adds a new class, External_Reference_Link and a new slot to EA_Class (and therefore all subclasses of EA_Class), external_reference_links that is a multi-instance slot to manage instances of External_Reference_Link. An inverse slot from Exte...

Thanks for your post. A Business Activity could also be called an Elementary Business Process. A process that is performed by one person in one place at one time. As such, these are the atomic elements of Business Processes. The tasks are a lower level of granularity again, reflecting the detailed, ...

To further develop the requirements for the ability to capture references to external (to Essential) items, e.g. documentation, it should be possible for any element in the Essential model to have multiple references to external things, via a URL. Therefore, this extension is revised to perform the ...

Hi Mirek, thanks for your post. Sounds like you have a good understanding of the meta model and it is good to see that you have been exploring the Legal and Cost Management extension. This extension is still in the approval/review phase of the ECP, so it's great to get your feedback. To answer your ...

Thanks to Mirek for pointing out the problems with capturing the difference between having a deal/contract that covers the use of a Technology Product for a number of instances, and the application of that contract to each of the instances. One way to model this would be to define relationships from...

Hi Sathish,
Glad that you've got an approach that works for now.
We will keep you posted about this.

Jonathan

Hi Jane,

I'm not quite clear exactly what you mean.
Do you mean hiding classes (and therefore instances) in the Protege modeller?
Or do you mean hiding classes and instances in the Essential Viewer?

Thanks

Jonathan

ECP 3 is split into two parts - ECP-3.1 and ECP-3.2 - and introduces the capability to capture references to external documentation for any element in the repository. Additionally, links to those references will be made available in Essential Viewer reports. ECP-3.2 Covers the required extensions to...

ECP 3 is split into two parts - ECP 3.1 and ECP 3.2 - and introduces the capability to capture references to external documentation for any element in the repository. Additionally, links to those references will be made available in Essential Viewer reports. ECP 3.1 Covers the required extensions to...

Yes, I'm going to raise an ECP (Essential Community Process) to introduce this. We'll initially provide this as an extension pack - both to Essential Viewer and to the meta model - but it will make its way into the main product. The meta model extension will be fairly simple (adjusting the forms to ...

Hi Sathish, Currently, there is not a simple way to get the dynamic SVG models of Jambalaya exported to a webpage. A web-based version of Protege (Web Protege) is being developed but won't be a supported platform for Essential until it is more stable. However, there are the snapshot and filmstrip ca...

Hi David, thanks for your post You are correct about the External Repository Instance Reference is strictly for synchronising instances in the Essential Repository with external sources, from a spreadsheet to an Enterprise Configuration Management repository. As it stands, we don't have fields in th...

I've just uploaded version 0.1 of the meta model extension and a sample repository to test out that what we've designed works. In doing this, I have made a couple of updates to the meta model design (nothing big). Here is the version that has been implemented: http://www.enterprise-architecture.org/...

Thanks for posting this. Great work.
Previously, I'd created a specific "export to CSV" report through a simple XSLT. This looks really interesting.

Jonathan

No, you shouldn't replace it. We provided this as it was missing from the earlier releases of Protege for Windows. If it's now (apologies for not spotting this - I'm not sure when it was introduced) go with what Protege provides you with. I'll update the install to remove our version of shutdown_pro...

Hi Peter. I realise that the tutorials are a bit light on this at the moment. Information can be associated with Business Processes by specifying the information views that the process creates, reads, updates and deletes. I might only read information in the course of it's execution, so it's perfect...

We've tested this again with Tomcat 6 and have not been able to replicate this issue. Could you try some further things to help narrow down where the issue lies? Does Essential Viewer work? Open a browser and go to http://<your host>:8080/essential_viewer Do you have more details from catalina.out? ...

For some reason there seems to be a problem with the x.tld tag library in the Essential Viewer webapp - most likely as the servlet is loaded by Tomcat as this particular servlet (for receiving the published repository) does not use any tag libraries. We have tested on Tomcat 6 but we'll take a furth...

This is the latest version of the proposed meta model enhancement for ECP-1. http://www.enterprise-architecture.org/images/stories/essential/forum_posts/ECP/licensemodelenhancement_2_500.png Please click on the image to view it full size. The main changes that have been made are as follows: Moved th...

That's great news. Thanks for getting back to us and for your help in tracking this down.
I'll now release this as an update to the Essential Software.

Jonathan

Thanks for posting these - don't worry about the trace dump - makes it easy to see what's happening. I notice 2 things from the trace. Firstly, it looks like you are using Protege 3.4 RC1. We have fixed our custom widgets so that they work with the full release of Protege 3.4 now. So if you have a c...

I've made the required software updates that should fix the Apache issue but I would like to confirm that they do resolve the issue that you have before I release them fully. Could you download these 2 updates and verify that the Repository Publishing works properly (i.e. gets a success message) whe...

We've now published the Essential Roadmap and will maintain this page as the project develops.

It is important to note that this is not a plan and that we are keen that the needs of the Community drive the priorities for developing the Project.

Jonathan

Thanks for getting back to me on this. I've had a look at the source code for the mod_jk to see what it does with the response from Tomcat. Basically, if the webapp returns an HTTP response status that is not in the standard set, the Apache/Tomcat adapter (mod_jk) takes this as a 500 and hence the r...

Thanks for letting us know - and for confirming that you are using Protege 3.4. The database storage components have been completely re-written between version 3.3.1 and 3.4 and have resolved an issue with MS SQLServer 2005. However, I will pursue the Oracle 10g issue. You're right, though, we've fo...

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. This is all great stuff - exactly the sort of thing we were looking for in doing this ECP process. I think this has made the requirements a lot clearer. It's interesting - just before you sent this, Jason and I were discussing your previous post and whethe...

Just had another look at the source code. The report service (that receives the XML snapshot from the Protege tab) is setting the status on the HTTP response, as there's no response content (e.g. there's no HTML page to send back to the Protege tab). Perhaps there's some setting in Apache that is av...

Yes, the report service expects an HTTP Post as follows (from the Javadoc): To use this service, send an HTTP POST with the following parameters "action" = "report" "kbXML" = <XML document of the Protege knowledge base> So grab a copy (or a cut down copy) of your report...

Did you try re-downloading the sample project? We have had a similar case that was caused by a bad download and re-downloading fixed everything. Apologies if you've already tried this. If you could find any exception messages from Protege, that would be very helpful - either in the command prompt th...

This error indicates that the server process running in the Essential Viewer has raised an exception of some sort - at the very least the positive, success status is not being returned to the client (the report publishing tab). Could you check in the catalina.out file in your Tomcat installation for...

Hi Luca, Thanks for getting back to me. Apologies for taking so long to get back to you. You make some very interesting points here - and I think we're nearly there in getting this right. In answer to your point about the OSI or FSF approved, I think the answer is to make a new enumeration called Li...

I've just found this problem described on a Protege discussion from 2007 - using Protege 3.2.1 and Oracle 10g . It appears to be something to do with a limit to the number of characters that can be used in a VARCHAR. >> This may be due to the issue "Oracle has the infamous problem of not >> bei...

Thanks for posting the solution to this. I will update the installation guides to reflect this. I would just point out that installing without a JVM is an option - for example where you do not wish to have multiple JVMs installed - and not a recommendation. However, I think it would be useful if we ...

You are correct in that the user you created needs full access to create things in the database. Sounds like the database and indexes have been created correctly but that for some reason a constraint is being violated when the knowledge base is being written into the database. I'll try to find out w...

Just wanted to make sure that you had seen the proposed design for the License Model extension. See this forum posting In line with the Community Process that I described in a recent blog, we'd be very interested in your comments and I'll shortly be posting a meta model update to test out this exten...

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for this. We do have a high-level roadmap for the both the platform and the meta model. We did not have any immediate plans to publish this yet, but if it's of interest, we'll bring that forward and get it on the main over the next few days.

Jonathan

License Model Meta Model Extension The following UML class diagram describes the proposed approach for extending the meta model to manage licenses that apply to anything in the core meta model, e.g. applications, technology products, business processes, information. All classes in the License_Model_...

We've released a meta model update for the Essential Baseline repository (and any repository that has been created from this baseline). This update is required to import relationship classes into your repository using the Essential Integration Server from an external repository - in particular other...

Could you describe any error messages that you are getting? It might also be worth downloading and unpacking the sample repository again. Make sure to unpack it somewhere where the 3 project files are in the same folder (.PINS, .PONT, .PPRJ) Let me know whether this helps - and any error messages Th...

That's great to hear.
I've just uploaded another slight update that produces a warning message for duplicates where the types don't match, as this particular scenario could cause problems but really is down to bad data.

Jonathan

Just to let you know that there is an updated version of the Essential Integration Server available from the Share area . This update fixes the following issues: Handling of duplicate instances in the source information Setting of Float, Integer and Boolean slot values in the target repository Jonat...

I did some tests today and replicated the problem. I agree that it's better to have robust code that will handle duplicates. I've posted an updated version of the Essential Integration Server to the Share area - but all you really need is the updated import XSL, which is also up there as a separate ...

Hi, Great to hear that you're finding the Integration Server useful and thanks for raising this issue. A lot of the early use of the server was for just this purpose - importing physical node information. By the way, as you might notice from the sample repository, physical servers are captured using...

To understand what might be need to provide a capability for capturing and modelling Organisational Policies and Compliance that has as wide a coverage as possible, this Essential Community Process, ECP-2, has been created. Initial requirements to date: Associate compliance with WHAT and HOW across ...

This meta model extension enables modellers to more accurately and flexibly capture and analyse license models. Initial requirements so far: Associated with Cost Management Manage types of licenses, e.g. different license models such as Open Source, Commercial etc., as a modeller-defined extensible ...

The source code is now available to download from the Share area as a ZIP containing the source and the Javadoc.

You can find it here.

Jonathan

The source for the Essential Meta Model is provided as part of the Protege project (essential_baseline_v.1.0.pprj, pins, pont). The source for the Essential Viewer reports are XSL documents that you can find in the application, business, common, documentation, information and technology folders of t...

We've just published a more detailed article describing how to write your own reports. There's more to come in this article but I thought it was worth getting the basics out there as soon as possible.

Creating New Reports

Jonathan

Just a quick post to let you know that we have just released an updated version of Essential Architecture Manager which resolves the widget bug with Protege 3.4 You can download a patch update of the Essential Widgets to use with your Protege 3.4 installations or take the new release of Essential Ar...

Hi, it is indeed possible. Please see this posting about the Essential Integration Server , which is in an early but fully functional form. There are some manual steps but it's still worth it. It's XML-based but supports on-going synchronisation with external data sources (I've been using this for o...

I've uploaded a pre-alpha version of the Integration Server to our community share area. Although this still has a few manual steps that we are working on automating, it performs the imports and on-going synchronisation correctly and I've been using this in anger for some months. New developments to...

Glad to hear that you are up and running. This is a strange one, though. I've run the Protege server very happily on Windows 2003 for some time, and I've not seen this. I'll keep looking into this, though. Out of interest, how does the invocation of rmiregistry in your new batch file differ from tha...

Hi, Can you check that the RMI Registry is running, please? That's the only connection that the server should be making during startup (before any clients attempt to connect to it). This should be started for you in the run_protege_server.bat file but it could be that it has not started. To check th...

What we'd like to do is to operate a 'community process' to introduce this capability properly. We're keen that this is not a 'hack' - and we've already been looking into some slightly wider, related requirements - so we'll post the design for review by yourself and others before delivering the exte...

Sorry for taking so long to reply.

Thanks for this, we see what you're trying to do.
Jason is working on a detailed reply at the moment and will get back to you very soon.

Jonathan

We are going to provide a 'pre-alpha' version of the Essential Integration Server for you to use. There are still some manual steps to go through but it works nicely in terms of importing from external sources (and even synchronising with them on an on-going basis). We're working on making this more...

I'm not sure I'm clear what you're looking for here. Is it that you want to have an element in the model that represents "the entire information architecture"? If so, you should do this as you describe by using composition. All the Information Layer artefacts (Concepts, Views and Represent...

The really wanderful thing about the Essential project is that you can fill the holes a bit at a time, but you can get some return immediately, so stuff like the licence description is something that could be fille with time, but could be useful to legal office. Also something to relate if a licenc...

Do you mean the license details for Essential Architecture Manager and the Essential Meta Model? If so, these can be found be found in EA_Support->About_Essential->Essential_Licensing in the class browser when you're working on your Essential project. However, if you mean where can you capture the l...

Hi Jim, Yes, that tutorial article is focussed on how to introduce a report that you've generated into the Essential Viewer (and not how to make the report in the first place). Have a look at Jason's forum posting about how to go about creating a new report . We'll make this into a tutorial. There's...

You should be seeing the Essential Architecture Reporting tab in the client Protege. The first thing to make sure is that you've followed the Client-side installation guide. You need to make sure that the Essential Widgets are deployed to all of the local client installations of Protege. The process...

Hi. If the step to convert your project to the database "backend" has completed successfully, it sounds like the bug with SQLServer 2005 has been fixed in Protege 3.4 (which is great news). The Project Save button is always disabled when running in client-server mode. This is way Protege w...

Hi Stig. Thanks for your question. The documentation for this is being re-worked at the moment as things have changed a bit with the metaproject in Protege 3.4. In the meantime, what you have to do is the following: To create the new "Project", you are defining your repository to the serve...

Unfortunately, you would have to downgrade all the client installations - it's a client-side issue that we have at the moment. I would also recommend down-grading the server so that you can safely run the client on the server to perform admin tasks etc. (Although it's possible / likely that the RC1 ...

Hi, Currently, support for BPMN and XPDL is not 'out-of-the-box'. However, the capability to export or view, e.g. Business Processes, in a variety of formats and notations is there via the reporting in the Essential Viewer component. Producing exports of Business Processes in XPDL format is on our l...

Hi Jim, Thanks for letting us know about this. We are looking into this now, have reproduced the bug and have identified that a code change introduced into Protege after 3.4 RC1 is causing our widget some problems. We're working to resolve this. I would like to suggest that you download Protege 3.4 ...

Good question. Access control to the repository is all provided by Protege. Having had another read through the Protege documentation of How Policies Work , to see what might be new with version 3.4, it looks like the answer is "no". User access policies operate at either the project or se...

Yes, it is. You can define technology architectures to capture your common technology layer. Technology Component Architecture is used to capture the logical technology components (types of technology, e.g. application server, relational database management system). You then use a Technology Product...

Thanks very much, Luca! We are very keen that anyone who wants to can contribute back to the Essential Project, for example: - new Essential Viewer reports, - meta model extensions, - packs of instances as you describe or perhaps even "reference models" for a particular domain, e.g. consum...

Thanks Luca - that is very helpful.

We'll get the installation documentation updated to reflect what is new for Protege 3.4

Jonathan

Hi Luca, Great to hear that you've got it all working now. Thanks for letting us know. The annotations project that you mentioned only gets created when you start using 'Collaborative Protege' by enabling the Changes tab. A new feature of Protege 3.4 is that the repository for the changes can now be...

Hi Luca. Thanks for posting. Let me start by asking you some questions: Which version of Protege are you using, 3.3.1 or 3.4? Protege 3.4 has only just been properly released (although we've been testing with the release candidate 1) and we are updating the documentation to reflect some of the chang...

Hi Gaurav, You can find a high-level view of how the meta classes are related in the Tutorials. However, these are described by 'layer' (Business, Application, Information, Technology) and are aimed at providing an introduction to the main constructs. Business Layer Overview Application Layer Overvi...