What is Architecture Management?

To begin, it is important to define what we mean by "architecture management".  By "architecture", we are referring to the model hierarchy and organization, i.e., its topology.  By "management", we are referring to the act of using that architecture in new ways.

Architecture Analysis

To understand how a model behaves, one must understand how it is organized.  What kind of hierarchical modeling structure used?  How has the model been partitioned - by functional requirements, by physical subsystems, by modeling domains, etc.?  What are the interfaces to the model's subsystems?  These are the initial questions that must be answered in order to analyze an existing model or to design a new model.

In the early development stages, the models may not be very complicated.  For models such as the one shown here, the interfaces can be easily understood and interpreted.  However, over time, models can easily grow in size to the point where it is no longer easy to understand.  This model may also just be one subsystem within a much more complicated system.  Tools such as Emmeskay's Integrated Modeling Environment (IME) allow the engineer to visualize the model architecture in a variety of useful ways.

Using IME's visualization capabilities, the engineer can easily browse the model hierarchy in a tool-neutral environment.  They can expand subsystems of interest while keeping the entire hierarchy visible.  They can view any level of the model from a variety of views, such as trees views or network diagrams.  Features such as these greatly increase the engineer's ability to understand the organization of complicated models.  This in turn allows them to better understand how changes in one part of the model impacts other subsystems.

Architecture Management

Having analyzed a model's architecture, the engineer can now manage the architecture for a variety of purposes.  For example, they may wish to create multiple implementations of the model.  For certain analysis needs, such as HIL testing, a fast running, design-oriented model is required.  For other analyses, such as vehicle performance studies, a more detailed, controls-oriented model may be required.  Emmeskay's tools allow the engineer to easily reconfigure the model, creating different implementations of the model for their specific needs.

Engineers also need to understand the differences in interfaces for various subsystem choices within a model library.  Using IME from Emmeskay, they can perform an architecture invariance analysis to determine the interface compatability.  They can also study implementation compatibility between different parts of the architecture.  For example, this can prevent someone from attempting to create a model implementation that uses spark ignition engine model with a compression ignition controller model.