Build the future today with Sparx
Software teams face more technologies, projects and platforms than ever. To more effectively manage the growing complexity, Agile and traditional teams choose Sparx System’s Enterprise Architect to stay focused and in control. With Enterprise Architect, large and distributed teams can collaborate more effectively as well as design, build, and manage their solutions and processes faster and with greater ease.
“Enterprise Architect provides a fantastic viewpoint of multiple technologies and organizational units all working together,” said Geoffrey Sparks, CEO of Sparx Systems. “With extensive capabilities for reverse engineering and analyzing software, together with advanced, simulation, profiling and state code generation, it is the perfect platform for understanding the past, perfecting the present, and planning for the future.”
Sparx was included in the 2014 SD Times 100 for its significant contributions to the ALM and Development Tools category. Its Enterprise Architect product integrates a unique range of technologies and behaviors including strategic modeling, requirements definition, business process modeling and verification, class modeling and software design, architectural decisions, systems definition, testing, maintenance, and deployment.
Introducing Enterprise Architect 11
Enterprise Architect has a long history of delivering exceptional value. Version 11 is the most significant release to date, introducing hundreds of new features, fixes, and performance improvements. Some of the most interesting highlights include new cloud-based services, a new Reusable Asset Service (RAS), requirements management enhancements, new publishing capabilities, new charting capabilities, and visual execution analysis tools. Other improvements are described in the release notes.
“In a rapidly changing technological world, it is critical to structure, manage, share and use information in a standards-based way,” said Sparks. “Enterprise Architect’s low cost of ownership, global outlook, standards-based repository and proven track record make it the preeminent ALM platform to achieve that goal on a local or global scale.”
The new cloud-based services simplify the global and distributed development of complex and high-quality models, which reduces total cost of ownership and opens up entirely new possibilities for distributed development. Now, distributed teams can model, share, manage, and integrate their projects with minimal effort. The Reusable Asset Service also supports team-based reuse of architectural models, standards, and other assets, further increasing productivity and facilitating the adoption of a well-understood, common architectural language.
While requirements management has always been a strong feature of Enterprise Architect, the new Specification Manager tool allows modelers and requirements gatherers to work in a familiar document-like interface. Behind the scenes, Enterprise Architect builds a reusable model structure that can be used to drive and validate concrete solutions. There are also discussion tools that allow teams to provide feedback and chat-style commentary on developing model artifacts. With Specification Manager, both solution providers and customers can actively engage during the critical requirements development phase.
Enterprise Architect 11’s publishing capabilities have also been enhanced with new tools for building report templates that can capture and report on information within a model at extremely fine levels. The new styles, new built-in templates and new capabilities provide a powerful toolset for building stunning documents for consumers of model information, outside the model itself.
The latest charting capabilities support Kanban diagrams, new batch processing and other tools to facilitate even more effective project management. From Agile to traditional projects, Enterprise Architect continues to provide an ideal mix of tools for integrating model, design, build, test, and deployment.
Finally, Enterprise Architect’s execution analysis tools add new recording models, the ability to switch between a debug and profiling session, and other features that make execution verification and visualization possible in entirely new ways. Toward that end, Enterprise Architect integrates state machines with its code generator, execution analyzer and simulation engines, making it possible to build highly detailed and complex state charts that can be exported in a variety of languages, compiled into executable code, then seamlessly debugged and integrated back into the simulator and the original model. The simulator allows the code to be tested with a variety of events, data, and other parameters, and the resulting code is ready for integration into deployable applications as required.
Enterprise 11 is available now, including a 30-day, risk-free trial.
What’s next
Later this year, Sparx will include broader support of XML-based technologies such as eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and XML Schema Definition (XSD), as well as new tools and options for Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). It will also feature UI updates, and enable seamless and precise integration of data modeling technologies into the whole Enterprise Architect experience.
In the meantime, Sparx continues to host a twice-monthly live webinar series that covers the full spectrum of Enterprise Architect topics, each of which attracts several hundred attendees. All of the webinars are also available as archives on demand. To receive notifications of upcoming topics, simply join Sparx’s mailing list.
For more information about Sparx Systems, Enterprise Architect and the webinars, visit www.sparxsystems.com.
