2016-07-12 Tuesday - Free Architecture Tool Resources

A colleague recently asked me for suggestions of possible free or Open Source tools for use in crafting the Architecture of a solution.  Here's the response I provided...

You might find this recent white paper of interest...

Journal of Object Technology, vol. 14, no. 1, 2015,
Evaluating the capabilities of Enterprise Architecture modeling tools for Visual Analysis
Department of Systems and Computing Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2015_01/article3.pdf

Open Source Diagramming / Architecture Tools...

Not sure about these...haven't spent any time exploring them yet...

• http://www.enterprise-architecture.org/

• http://www.enterprise-architecture.org/about/screenshots

• http://www.adoit-community.com/

• https://www.iteraplan.de/en/editionen/

I've found Graphviz to be useful for automating diagram generation from any available metadata sources...

• http://www.graphviz.org/

...but today, I would look at adopting D3.js - for some stunning diagramming capabilities...

• https://github.com/d3/d3/wiki/Gallery

SchemaSpy is a great tool for auto-generating HTML documentation of existing database schemas - and it leverages graphviz behind the scenes to auto-generate diagrams...

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/schemaspy/

this appears to be a more actively maintained type of database schema doc tool..

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/schemacrawler/

There are some useful plugins available within the Eclipse ecosystem - and the latest version of Eclipse (4.6, Neon) was just recently released

• http://www.eclipse.org

A recent Eclipse plugin that I've found useful:

• https://github.com/intltechventures/EclipseNotes/blob/master/README.md

Other Eclipse plugins, specific to modeling efforts:

• https://www.eclipse.org/modeling/mdt/
• http://projects.eclipse.org/projects/technology.epf
• https://eclipse.org/papyrus/
• https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/uml-designer
• https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/umlet-uml-tool-fast-uml-diagrams
• https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/uml-designer

"Archi" for ArchiMate modeling...
http://www.archimatetool.com/

• https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/archi-archimate-modelling-tool
• http://www.archimatetool.com/dev/eclipse-setup

Diagramming tooling...some are Open Source...some are free (or have limited-use restrictions) - some  have UML/Archimate/etc. support...

• https://docs.google.com/drawings

• https://www.openoffice.org/product/draw.html

• http://plantuml.com/

• https://www.gliffy.com/

• https://www.modelio.org/

• http://argouml.tigris.org/

• http://www.yworks.com/products/yed

• https://www.draw.io/

• https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

• https://www.lucidchart.com/users/registerLevel?tP=1&t4=A&t10=A

• http://creately.com/plans

2018-08-05 Sunday - Additions, specific to ArchiMate modeling...
re: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/50758/50758-6428603106120003584

https://www.yworks.com/products/yed

"yEd is a powerful desktop application that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality diagrams.
Create diagrams manually, or import your external data for analysis. Our automatic layout algorithms arrange even large data sets with just the press of a button.
yEd is freely available and runs on all major platforms: Windows, Unix/Linux, and macOS."

https://github.com/colugo/yed-archimate

"This palette introduces archimate support to yEd"

https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-modeling/

Openmodeling has currently 5 modules available:
• Application portfolio management
• ArchiMate 3.0 architecture (including The Open Group Model Exchange)
• Demo conceptual modeling
• Efqm quality assessment
• Business and system modeling

https://about.draw.io/new-archimate-3-0-shapes/

• https://www.draw.io/?splash=0&libs=archimate3

http://plantuml.com/

• http://en.plantuml.com/archimate-diagram

https://www.eclipse.org/papyrus
https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/archimate-papyrus