[This is one of a series of example entries which you might create on your own intranet site, in order to help your users use EA better. This page will be called by the built-in help of some Model Expert example reference models.]
{This is one of the built-in checks which Model Expert performs on your models}
EA supplies you with lots of built-in attributes which you can use to define your elements. The most obvious is the ‘name’. But there are also Notes, Alias, Phase, Status, Version, and lots more.
In addition, EA also lets you create ‘tagged values’ which are additional attributes which you can add to any element or connector.
So when you create a ‘Process’ element, you might give it a ‘name’ of ‘Create Widget’. You might then give it an Alias of ‘PROC 1.4.6.7’.
But when I create my process, I might not know that I;m supposed to put some data into the ‘Alias’ attribute. Instead, I create a tagged value called ‘Process Reference’, and give it a value of ‘PROC 3.8.1’.
So we’re both trying to do the same thing, but in different ways, and in doing so, we’re making our model inconsistent, and harder for others to read and understand.
In your Model Expert Reference Model, you can say which attributes and tagged values you’d like modellers to use. And if they make use of either a built-in EA attribute, or a tagged value which are not in the Reference Model, then they will see this error.
So this is a good place to describe which attributes are needed for which types of element, and what they mean.