A Case Study on Textual Enterprise Architecture Modeling

Today's Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) tools are based on forms and graphical modeling capabilities via web-based applications or desktop clients. However, recent developments in textual modeling tools have not yet been considered for EA modeling in research and practice. In this paper we present a novel EAM-tool approach, called Txture, that consists of a textual modeling environment and a web-application to provide enterprise-wide architecture visualizations for different stakeholder groups. The tool is in production use at a major Austrian data center, where it proofed to be intuitive and provide efficient modeling capabilities compared to traditional approaches. In this paper we present lessons learned from the development of the tool as well as usage it and report on its benefits and drawbacks.