Architecture Modelling

[AS147]

Folks, my first time posting so forgive any incorrect placement of this post. I am an IT Solutions architect and I am sad to say there is a lot of snobbery about which modelling tools our community should use. It is very clear that many architects, trainers and others I have met treat Visio with complete disdain and can't stop repeating the fact that visio can do modelling and is somehow below the noble art architecture. Architects to be very vocal in their objection to visio as a modelling tool (mainly because it doesn't have a relational database behind it to allow the building of common models and relationships and metadata to components).

They generally talk about tools such as Sparx Enterprise Architect as one of the "best" tools. However the problem with these tools are that they usie diagrammatical representations that are not easy to understand to the people receiving this information. The benefit of something like visio is that the diagrams speak a common language known to all. Ideally I'd love to use Visio but because of this snobbery and the lack of functionality in terms of reusing models and components from a respository we are constantly rehashing other diagrams rather than just updating the same central data.

So after that long winded story does anyone know of architects in IT using visio with this capability i.e. are there any third party products or capabilities in visio to enable the use of a backend architecture database?

[Paul Herber]

Where is our ex-architect MVP, David? I've sent him an alert, he may be interested!

[AS147]

Thanks Paul. I see this as a significant business use case/opportunity for Visio as it has all the mind share in terms of its usability and ease of understanding. Tools like Sparx Enterprise Architect is basically very difficult for average (non architect) folk to consume/understand.  The purpose of writing architecture designs is mainly to get the engineers to turn them into physical deployments. Sparx EA is very theoretical in its presentation but we are communicating with very "real world" minded folk.

[bVisual]

Thanx for the nudge Paul!
Have you looked at http://www.orbussoftware.com/ ?
I have worked with this company for many years.

[AS147]

Thanks folks, this looks like a good fit. I have tried to find costs on this site but can't find any. Does anyone have any indicative pricing?

[MilesT]

Orbus is one of the less expensive tools (Sparx EA is also well priced, but, doesn't really do Enterprise, more solution).

Also worth looking at Essential EA which is free (but not Visio based) if your modelling is more enterprise model level aligned to TOGAF