Relationships¶

Relationships provide the context that turns a collection of records into an Enterprise Architecture model.

Governed vocabulary¶

OpenEA Community 1.5.2 seeds 25 relationship types. Each relationship type specifies valid source and target object types.

For example:

Application ── supports ──► Business Capability
Application ── uses ──────► Technology
Initiative  ── changes ───► Application

OpenEA rejects combinations that are not defined by the metamodel.

One stored relationship, two readable directions¶

Relationships are stored once. The relationship type also contains an inverse display label.

For example:

Stored:
Customer Portal ── supports ──► Customer Management

Viewed from the capability:
Customer Management ◄── supported by ── Customer Portal

OpenEA does not create a duplicate inverse relationship row.

Relationship metadata¶

Relationships can include:

Description
Criticality
Confidence
Valid From
Valid Until
Source
Governed relationship-specific properties

The integrates with relationship supports additional metadata including integration type, protocol, direction, criticality, description, and data exchanged.

Relationships drive analysis¶

Repository relationships are used by:

Object relationship tabs
Impact Analysis
Capability support counts
Technology dependent-application counts
Risk calculations
Findings
Portfolios
Roadmaps and change context

Relationship history and archived objects¶

Archiving an architecture object does not delete its relationships. OpenEA preserves them so historical architecture remains explainable and so restoration does not require relationship recreation.

The browser Relationships tab shows current relationships by default. Show archived reveals both relationships to archived objects and relationship records that were independently archived. Historical entries use the normal theme background plus an Archived badge and are read-only in that view. Archived objects are not offered as targets for new relationships.