Formalizing and modeling enterprise architecture (EA) principles with goal-oriented requirements language (GRL)

Abstract

Enterprise Architecture (EA) principles are normally written in natural language which makes them informal, hard to evaluate and complicates tracing them to the actual goals of the organization. In this paper, we present a set of requirements for improving the clarity of definitions and develop a framework to formalize EA principles with a semi-formal language, namely the Goal-oriented Requirements Language (GRL). We introduce an extension of the language with the required constructs and establish modeling rules and constraints. This allows us to automatically reason about the soundness, completeness and consistency of a set of EA principles. We demonstrate our methodology with a case study from a governmental organization. Moreover, we extend an Eclipse-based tool.