Using Semantic Web Technologies for Enterprise Architecture Analysis

Enterprise Architecture (EA) models are established means for decision makers in organizations. They describe the business processes, the application landscape and IT infrastructure as well as the relationships between those layers. Current research focuses merely on frameworks, modeling and documentation approaches for EA. But once these models are established, methods for their analysis are rare. In this paper we propose the use of semantic web technologies in order to represent the EA and perform analyses. We present an approach how to transform an existing EA model into an ontology. Using this knowledge base, simple questions can be answered with the query language SPARQL. The major benefits of semantic web technologies can be found, when defining and applying more complex analyses. Change impact analysis is important to estimate the effects and costs of a change to an EA model element. To show the benefits of semantic web technologies for EA, we implemented an approach to change impact analysis and executed it within a case study.