Relationships, direction, and meaning | ArchiMate Foundation: reading models and dependencies

Concept and mechanism

Choosing a relationship means choosing an architectural statement. Assignment can allocate an actor to a role or a component to a function. Realization links an implementation to something more abstract that it helps bring about. Serving indicates that functionality is provided to another element, so its conceptual direction runs from provider to the served element. Access describes acting on information, distinguishing reading and writing when relevant. Flow expresses transfer; Triggering expresses a temporal or causal connection. One does not automatically imply the other: a file may be transferred before a process starts through an independent event.

Guided application

Consider a query service used by a reconciliation process. Serving describes provided functionality rather than a network call captured at one instant. If the process reads a business object, Access makes that reading explicit. To show results transferred between behaviors, consider Flow; to show completion of one activity starting another, consider Triggering. Always confirm that the actual element types permit the relationship. Composition and aggregation describe whole-element relationships with different semantics; do not choose solely by appearance. Avoid inferring automatic database deletion from an architectural relationship. A connection accepted by the tool still requires meaning review in the modeled context.

IN PRACTICE

Sending a file and starting a batch are statements that may require different relationships.

Common pitfalls

Reversed Serving; Flow treated as automatic cause; permitted relationship treated as correct relationship.

Related topics: Language, model, and aspects · Motivation and strategy · Business: actors, roles, and services

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Explain each connection in a sentence before drawing it.

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Reference: Archi hint: serving · OGA-031; ArchiMate 3.2