A Deep Perspective on the ArchiMate Modeling Language and Standard

Given the scale, complexity and variety of enterprise architectures, approaches for modeling them need to be as simple and flexible as possible in order to minimize the accidental complexity within enterprise architecture models. Multi-level modeling techniques offer an effective way of achieving this but to date there has been little research into how they could contribute to enterprise architecture modeling. In this article we therefore explore how the former could be best leveraged within the latter by considering the modeling goals, architecture and principles of one of the most concrete and widely used enterprise architecture modeling standards: ArchiMate. More specifically, we discuss how the conceptual integrity of the ArchiMate standard and modeling experience could be enhanced using multi-level modeling principles. In our discussions, we focus on a specific variant of multi-level modeling, called deep modeling, which is based on the notions of orthogonal classification and deep instantiation.