Key Benefits

Design and Build Diverse Systems Using UML

• UML is an open standard that provides a rich language for describing, documenting and designing software, business and IT systems in general
• Enterprise Architect enables you to leverage the full expressive power of UML 2.5 to model, design and build diverse systems in an open and well understood manner
• You can generate code, database structures, documentation and metrics; transform models; or specify behavior and structure as the basis for contractual agreements

Model and Manage Complexity

• Enterprise Architect helps individuals, groups and large organizations model and manage complex information.
• Often this relates to software development and IT systems design and deployment, but it can also relate to business analysis and business process modeling.
• Enterprise Architect integrates and connects a wide range of structural and behavioral information, helping to build a coherent and verifiable architectural model, either what-is or what-will-be.
• Tools to manage version control, track and compare differences, audit changes and enforce security, help control project development and enforce compliance to standards.

Structured Use Case Scenarios

• Enterprise Architect's Structured Scenario editor enables you to develop structured Use Case Scenarios, to capture vital analysis information in the form of natural language descriptions.
• The editor helps you use this information to drive downstream development and maximize traceability across the development life-cycle.
• The editor also helps you to dynamically link scenario steps to associated model elements, such as domain elements, business rules and glossary terms.
• From structured scenarios, you can automatically generate test case descriptions, and Activity and other UML behavioral diagrams.
• You can even reverse engineer existing process diagrams into structured, textual specifications to produce documentation deliverables.

Share Models

• Enterprise Architect enables you to share complete models or specific aspects of a model between members of a team, including (through the 'Lite', read-only edition) stakeholders who can study a model but not change or manage it
• You can make your project .eap file available on a shared network drive, or replicate the .EAP file for complex distributed development
• Alternatively, you can develop the project in one of several shared DBMS repositories
• You can import and export data as XMI files to distribute and update frameworks and other Package-based model structures; you control changes through the version control repository
• Enterprise Architect provides a data transfer wizard that enables you to upsize or downsize the complete model for maximum flexibility, and it enables you to export and import reference data so that you do not have to recreate it for related projects

Model, Manage and Trace Requirements

• Enterprise Architect enables you to capture requirements and use full traceability from base requirements to design, build, deployment and beyond.
• You can use impact analysis to trace from proposed changes to original requirements, and build the 'right' system.

Develop Personal Views and Extracts of the Model

• Enterprise Architect enables you to develop any number of different views of your model, or parts of it, either for your personal use or for the use of your team.
• These Model Views are generated by reports, so they can be set up to always show the current status of the selected view.
• The facility also enables you to create Favorites folders of hyperlinks to frequently-used data structures.

Track and Trace Model Structures

• In even a small model, it can be difficult to locate specific Packages, diagrams or elements, even if you apply a rigorous naming and structure policy
• Enterprise Architect has a wealth of facilities that enable you to locate structures quickly and easily, through the Model Search, Package Browser, Diagram List, Auditing facility, Traceability window, Relationship Matrix and reports
• The 'Element' menu, 'Diagram' menu and Project Browser context menus also enable you to locate elements in diagrams and in the Project Browser, and you can store hyperlinks to important or commonly-used elements and diagrams in the Model Views
• Finally, having located one element you can import any related elements  into a diagram in a single operation

Generate Documentation

• Enterprise Architect provides powerful document generation and reporting tools with a full WYSIWYG template editor for document or web page output.
• You can generate complex and detailed reports from Enterprise Architect with the information you require in the format your company or client demands.

Generate and Reverse Engineer Source Code

• Enterprise Architect supports generation and reverse engineering of source code for many popular languages.
• With a built in 'syntax highlighting' source code editor, Enterprise Architect enables you to quickly navigate and explore your model source code in the same environment.
• Code generation templates enable you to customize the generated source code to your company specifications.

Visualize, Inspect and Understand Complex Software

• Software is complex and often hard to understand; you can use Enterprise Architect to reverse engineer code in a wide range of software development languages and database repository schema, to understand static structure
• To complete the picture, use the unique built-in profiling and debugging tools to capture and visualize executing software at run-time
• Create run-time instances of model elements and invoke methods using the built in Object Workbench
• You can also bring in complete frameworks from source code or Java .jar files - or even .NET binary assemblies
• By importing frameworks and library code, you can maximize re-use and understanding of your existing investment

Use Model Driven Architecture and  Transformations

• Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is an open standard designed to facilitate rapid application development in a platform independent manner.
• Models can be built at a high level of abstraction and, using MDA based tools, transformed into models and code targeting a specific platform or domain.
• Enterprise Architect supports advanced MDA transformations using easily edited and developed transformation templates.
• With built-in transformations for DDL, C#, Java, EJB and XSD, you can quickly develop complex solutions from simple platform independent models (PIMs) targeted at platform specific models (PSMs); one PIM can be used to generate and synchronize multiple PSMs, providing a significant productivity boost.

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Support

Enterprise Architect enables you to rapidly model and forward- and reverse-engineer two key W3C XML technologies:

• XML Schema (XSD) and
• Web Service Definition Language (WSDL)

XSD and WSDL support is critical for the development of a complete Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and the coupling of UML 2.5 and XML provides the natural mechanism for specifying, constructing and deploying XML-based SOA artifacts within an organization.

Systems Engineering support

Integrating many high-end features for Systems Engineers, the Ultimate and Systems Engineering editions of Enterprise Architect provide built-in support for:

• SysML
• Parametric model simulation
• Executable code generation
• Model to code transformations for Hardware Description Languages and Ada 2012

Model Databases

• Enterprise Architect enables you to reverse engineer from many popular DBMS systems.
• You can model database tables, columns, keys, foreign keys and complex relationships using UML and an inbuilt data modeling profile, and forward generate DDL scripts to create target database structures.

Customize Enterprise Architect

• Enterprise Architect also includes facilities that enable experienced tool developers to customize and extend Enterprise Architect to suit the specific requirements of their organization with, for example, in-house UML Profiles, Add-Ins and Code Templates
• The very detailed Automation Interface gives you access to most element features, major functions such as XMI import/export, and attached information; most properties are fully writable from the automation client
• The Automation Interface provides great support for plug-ins, with the ability to embed automation client windows in the main diagram view
• The Interface is accessible from any automation-aware client language, such as VB, C#, C++ and Delphi

Link Enterprise Architect to IDEs

• The Enterprise Architect installer provides facilities for locating the source code for Classes, attributes and operations, and for modeling, navigating, tracking, reverse engineering, building and running your project with source code from either of the Integrated Development Environments - Visual Studio .NET or Eclipse
• The MDG Integration products for Eclipse and Visual Studio provide an even closer, seamless integration of Enterprise Architect and UML 2.5 with your IDE, bringing the functionality required of a fully fledged modeling platform right inside the IDE