Validation of enterprise architecture through colored Petri nets

Abstract

Enterprise architecture procedure contains some instructions for conversion of enterprise architecture from the current state to the desirable state. This procedure generally contains 3 phases each of which is the basis and prerequisite of the next phase. These phases are: Strategic information technology planning, enterprise architecture planning and enterprise architecture execution. As each phase is a prerequisite of the next one, any fault in each phase causes bigger faults in final results. Therefore, each phase should be double checked to make sure no fault has occurred. The second phase can greatly influence the final results. Therefore the preparation of an executable enterprise architecture model and checking it with functional and non-functional requirements can prevent many faults and lead to execution of a perfect model of the enterprise. The primary objective of this research is to check the accuracy of EA behavior in achieving an appropriate architecture. In this research, official models have been used to propose a solution to transform the products of C4ISR framework to executable Petri nets. Finally, a method is proposed to check the accuracy of the mentioned model. The proposed solution makes the EA semi-automatically check the correctness of the enterprise architecture behavior and increase its accuracy.

Keywords

• Enterprise architecture
• Architecture behavior accuracy check
• Petri nets – executable model