Importing activity does not reflect new changes (new slot)

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Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

1. We have done meta-model changes new slot bus_cap_country of type string.
2. We did the following.
a. download a snapshot of your updated meta-model as Protege Files. Created a zip file
b. From the Import Utility home page, click on the "Import Settings" tab. In the "Target Environments" section, Reference updated.
c. We have one new dev created for this change. It is pointing to a new production.
d. We able to see the change in import specification. Column K
3. We did the following now
a. Selected new dev, new excel file where we defined last column K as “Country”
b. Imported with no errors. (before we were getting “warning for new slot”. Now after pointing dev/prod combination it is gone)
4. We try to see the changed records but it still shows old records.
5. I am sure we are missing something silly.

Can you throw some light.


thanks in advance
Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

Update: I have downloaded the updated repository from "Test Import Activity" and opened the same in Protege

It looks like old records not cleanedup. But it just appends new records.

Can you point how to clean the old business capabilities.
Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

can we get a helping hand?
jasonp
Posts: 70
Joined: 01 Jul 2017, 07:05

Hi,

just so that we can provide you with the correct advice, could you please provide clarification on the following:
  • Is your 'production' Target Environment a remote repository or one that you have directly uploaded to the Import Utility?
  • Do your new production/dev repositories already contain Business Capability instances and, if so, are you looking for the Import Utility to remove any that are no longer contained in the excel spreadsheet?
  • When you say 'still shows old records', do you mean business capabilities are being added to the repository, but the new slot is not being populated?
If you can let me know the answers to these questions, I will hopefully be able to identify the issue and suggest a solution.

On a separate note, I thought I would mention that the Essential Meta-Model has an existing class called 'Geographic_Region' which can be found under EA_Class/EA_Support/Utilities/Geography. This is the meta-class that we use to represent countries in the repository and are mapped to a number of areas across the meta-model (e.g. geographic scope of data in a database, location of physical sites). You do not have to take this approach for your new bus_cap_country of course, but, if you did, you would just need to configure the slot as having 'Value Type' set to Instance and then set 'Allowed Classes' to Geographic_Region. I believe the the out-of-the-box repository already contains a list of countries along with their ISO codes but, if not, please just let us know and we can send you an Essential Data Update Pack (.dup) that you can apply.

Regards,

Jason
Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

jasonp wrote: 25 Jun 2018, 10:16 Hi,

just so that we can provide you with the correct advice, could you please provide clarification on the following:
  • Is your 'production' Target Environment a remote repository or one that you have directly uploaded to the Import Utility?
Response: It is not remote repository, directly uploaded to the import utility.

  • Do your new production/dev repositories already contain Business Capability instances and, if so, are you looking for the Import Utility to remove any that are no longer contained in the excel spreadsheet?
Response: Both development/production should carry same business capability instances. we test in dev and want to publish to production. We are looking the import utility to delete business capabilities in the repository and insert the ones from the excel file being uploaded in the context.
  • When you say 'still shows old records', do you mean business capabilities are being added to the repository, but the new slot is not being populated?
Response: We could see old business capabilities with the new capabilities being reflected in the catalogue.
New slot is correctly populated.

If you can let me know the answers to these questions, I will hopefully be able to identify the issue and suggest a solution.

On a separate note, I thought I would mention that the Essential Meta-Model has an existing class called 'Geographic_Region' which can be found under EA_Class/EA_Support/Utilities/Geography. This is the meta-class that we use to represent countries in the repository and are mapped to a number of areas across the meta-model (e.g. geographic scope of data in a database, location of physical sites). You do not have to take this approach for your new bus_cap_country of course, but, if you did, you would just need to configure the slot as having 'Value Type' set to Instance and then set 'Allowed Classes' to Geographic_Region. I believe the the out-of-the-box repository already contains a list of countries along with their ISO codes but, if not, please just let us know and we can send you an Essential Data Update Pack (.dup) that you can apply.
Response: We do agree with the above point on the geography. but we not only associate geography with database, location of physical sites. But we have different sets of capabilities hierarchies for each geography. Let me know i understand the explanation clearly and able to different it.
Regards,

Jason
jasonp
Posts: 70
Joined: 01 Jul 2017, 07:05

Hi,

thanks for your responses to my questions.

The Import Utility has the capability to delete specific instances of a specified class, however, the Import Specification for the Essential LaunchPad is configured to be additive only. That is, it has been set up so that it will either update an existing instance that matches the ID column value (column B) or add a new instance if it does not already exist.

The idea behind the LaunchPad spreadsheet is to provide a means to bulk upload/update a set of instances, but we do not recommend that it is used as a means to maintain the data in your repository. In your case, we would recommend that, using the Protege client, you first remove any unwanted Business Capabilities from the repository that you then upload as the new production target environment before running your import against the test environment (be sure to click the "Refresh" button in the 'Test Import Activity' window before clicking 'Run Import').

Regarding the suggested approach to scoping Business Capabilities by country, associating Business Capabilities to countries as an instance relationship will still provide the ability to filter Business Capabilities in views, but provides greater flexibility when analysing your model. For example, it would allow you to identify which Business Capabilities and Organisations are relevant for a given Country.

Regards,

Jason
Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

updating-repository-after-import-does-not-work-as-expected.png
Thanks Jason for your inputs.

Finally what made work for us.

We were able to see both download import script and download updated repository works and has the updated data.
So we took this file, went to Protege opened it and published it manually now the repository has proper updated data.

But publish button click does not publish the repository for some weird reasons.

We kept on trying doing everything from scratch like creating fresh Repository,environment targets etc. No use.
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sarah.smith
Posts: 56
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Hi,

I’ve tested both the scenarios you mention using a local set up and it all works fine.
Publish to Test Viewer
If you have added the URL for the viewer when you add the repository in Import Settings then, when you click the 'Publish to Test Viewer' button, it will update the viewer with the instances added in that import.

Promote to Local Live
This allows you promote the repository you have just created to be the 'target repository', replacing the one you added originally in import settings - so you can then import again on top of the changes made. It doesn't promote it to a different live environment.

The way I tested this was that I added a blank repository in Import Settings, I then added some business processes only using the import utility, I then clicked the "Promote to Local Live' button and then added some Applications only using the import utility and the resulting repository that I downloaded has both business processes (from the first import) and Applications (from the second import). If I had not used the 'Promote to Local Live' button it would have only the Applications in it.


Sarah
Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

On a separate note, I thought I would mention that the Essential Meta-Model has an existing class called 'Geographic_Region' which can be found under EA_Class/EA_Support/Utilities/Geography. This is the meta-class that we use to represent countries in the repository and are mapped to a number of areas across the meta-model (e.g. geographic scope of data in a database, location of physical sites). You do not have to take this approach for your new bus_cap_country of course, but, if you did, you would just need to configure the slot as having 'Value Type' set to Instance and then set 'Allowed Classes' to Geographic_Region. I believe the the out-of-the-box repository already contains a list of countries along with their ISO codes but, if not, please just let us know and we can send you an Essential Data Update Pack (.dup) that you can apply.
Jason, thanks for this point.

Can you direct me to a tutorial or an article or a download extension, which can potentially show how to show capabilities for different countries. I know it is not out of the box.

Any pointers will be helpful.
Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

Jason awaiting your inputs on the country wide views side.

Meanwhile inorder to achieve view "Business Reference Model", I am able to add a slot "Country"
and show only specific country Business capabilities in "core_bl_bus_cap_model.xsl".

My question is in the launchpad excel sheet, for which sheets we should add "Country"
to show the country specific applications linked to country specific "Business Capability"


Am i correct? the following need "Country" as well?

1.Business Capabilties
2.Business Process 2 App Services
3.App Service 2 Apps


Also suggest how to handle group of countries display like "Asia Pacific", Americas, MENA etc.
JohnM
Posts: 467
Joined: 17 Feb 2009, 20:19

Rajaraman,

For the slot you've created, if you've followed Jason's instructions, we assume that you have added something like the following to achieve filtering of the Business Reference Model for a specific Country:

Get all relevant Business Capabilities and Countries:
<xsl:variable name=“busCaps” select=“/node()/simple_instance[type = ‘Business_Capability’]”/>

<xsl:variable name=“countries” select=“/node()/simple_instance[name = $busCaps/own_slot_value[slot_reference='{your slot name}']/value]”/>

Get the Business Capabilities relevant for a specific Country:
<xsl:variable name=“busCapsForCountry” select=“$busCaps[own_slot_value[slot_reference='{your slot name}']/value = $aCountry/name]”/>

Regarding adding country to the Launchpad spreadsheet you do need to be careful, as it may constrain the questions you can ask - if you are looking for duplication, opportunities, risk, etc then tying things directly to conceptual layer (e.g. Business Capabilities) limits your ability to understand how and why. We would suggest that, provided you have the data, you ought to infer which capabilities or applications are relevant to specific countries via physical processes and, more specifically, which organisations performs them, and in which countries.

Given that we already provide relationships from Physical Processes up to Business Capabilities, and from Physical Processes down to the supporting Applications, with this approach, you should not require any additional slots.

Look at the the top portion of the Business Process Domain Analysis model to see the meta model for this https://enterprise-architecture.org/models.php

For grouping countries, e.g. MENA, Geographic_Region supports hierarchy, so you can just create MENA and add the countries as children, the slot to use is: 'gr_contained_regions'. You should ideally classify the parent region using one of the taxonomy terms from the 'Region Type' taxonomy (e.g. Continent, Geopolitical Region), or alternatively create a new taxonomy term under the taxonomy (e.g. 'Sales Region')

Hope that helps

John
Rajaraman
Posts: 137
Joined: 02 May 2018, 12:20
Contact:

But Essential Launchpad Page and Instructions v2.pdf and Essential_Launchpad_V2_Capture_Spreadsheet_TEST.xlsx both don’t have details about Physical Process. How to load data for the above mapping. (Business Process -> Physical Service)
JohnM
Posts: 467
Joined: 17 Feb 2009, 20:19

Launchpad v2 doesn't cover physical process - luckily, Launchpad 3 which we are doing final testing on does.

The Launchpad, which is free, provides a backbone for your architecture and enables some key views, it doesn't cover everything, so you do have to make use of the models here https://enterprise-architecture.org/models.php, the tutorials, the videos here https://enterprise-architecture.org/videos.php#howto, use these forums or engage us if you need help.

John
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