Bridging UML and ArchiMate for Comprehensive Product Documentation

At Trixit, we rely on both UML and ArchiMate language to document our software products. Our goal is to maintain one modelling tool and one central repository—streamlining collaboration and ensuring traceability throughout the productdevelopment lifecycle.

Why We Chose Archi

Budget constraints at one of our customers ruled out enterprisegrade platforms such as Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, which support both notations outofthebox. Instead, we adopted Archi, an opensource tool that fully implements ArchiMate. To keep UML artefacts in the same environment we mapped our most frequently used UML diagrams to equivalent ArchiMate constructs.

Example 1: Class Diagram

Although ArchiMate lacks native classdiagram notation, combining Data Object elements, Specializations, Label Expression and Documentation fields and labelled multiplicities captures the same semantics.

Archi’s Label expression field has this value here:

<<${specialization}>> ${name}

${documentation}

And Documentation field might look like this:

-----------------------------------

Id

Description

Name

Color: Enum

Type: Enum

-----------------------------------

ListCreate (not possible for global type)

Detele (not possible for global type)

Update (not possible for global type)

Attach

Remove

List

This view explains how users assign labels—singleword metadata—to certificates so they can quickly filter and manage them.

see Figure 1

Bridging UML and ArchiMate for Comprehensive Product Documentation

Example 2: Sequence Diagram

This interaction diagram depicts the routine process that updates organizations and the status of their domains with the certificate provider. Components communicate via triggering and flow relationships, while a group element indicates the periodic loop – this is how we emulate the UML sequence diagram.

Lessons Learned

One repository beats many. Housing all models in Archi simplified version control and onboarding.

Opensource tools stretch further than expected. With creative modelling and a few conventions, Archi covered ~90 % of our UML needs. It did not cover the graphical clarity that UML readers are accustomed to.

AI accelerates reviews. ChatGPT reduced turnaround time, especially when translating between notations.

see Figure 2