The ArchiMate 2.1 Specification and supporting materials were released today. ArchiMate 2.1 is a maintenance update to ArchiMate 2.0, addressing comments raised since the introduction of ArchiMate 2.0 in 2012.
A summary of the main changes in this release include:
1. Additional explanatory text has been added in section 2.6 describing the ArchiMate Framework, its layers and aspects.
2. Corrections have been made to figures throughout the specification for consistency with the text, including metamodel diagrams, concept diagrams and example models.
3. An explanation has been added describing the use of colours within the specification. This makes it clear that the metamodel diagrams use colours to distinguish the different aspects of the ArchiMate Framework, and that within the models there are no formal semantics assigned to colours.
4. Within the three layers, the concepts are now classified according to the aspects of the ArchiMate Framework: Active Structure Concepts (instead of Structural Concepts), Behavioral Concepts, and Passive Structure Concepts (instead of Informational Concepts).
5. Duplicate text has been removed from the layers. For example "meaning" was defined in Section 3.4 and also in Section 3.4.2.
6. In the Layers, a number of concept diagrams have been corrected to show all the permitted symbols for the concept; for example, Business Interface, Application Service, and Infrastructure Service.
7. In the Architecture Viewpoints, the aspects for each viewpoint are now classified as per the ArchiMate Framework into Active Structure, Behaviour, or Passive Structure.
8. In the Architecture Viewpoints, a number of Concepts and Relationships diagrams have been updated to correct the relationships shown, similarly a number of example diagrams have corrections (for example use of a Communication Path to connect two nodes).
