Syndeia 3.6 Release, Part 7: Digital Thread Project Baselines

As part of the release of Syndeia 3.6, we are releasing a series of blog posts highlighting the new features supporting practical implementation of digital threads in system development.

In the most recent posts in this series, we have been reviewing new analysis and reporting capabilities in the Syndeia Web Browser. One additional capability is baselining, the ability to specify configurations of a digital thread project and generate difference tables between configurations.

The Digital Thread is dynamic. Project management needs to know not only the current state of a Digital Thread Project (DTP), but how it has changed over time. This helps them track cost and schedule targets and identify changes and bottlenecks that have impacted progress against those targets.

The inter-model relations that are stored in the Syndeia database are version-managed. The time and date are recorded when the relation is created. When one or both ends of the relations change, the relation may be updated to point to the latest version of the connected element(s). This increments the version number of the relation and its modification time and date. If a relation is deleted, it is no longer in the database, but a log of the deletion event is maintained. Using this information, the state of a DTP at any point in time can be reconstructed.

Figure 1 Syndeia Web Browser, Digital Thread Project dashboard, Baseline Definition

Baseline Manage

A Baseline represents the state of a Digital Thread Project and its contents at a specific point in time (timestamp). Users can create new baselines. Figure 1 shows Baselines tab, Manage subtab with a list of the baselines that have already been defined.

Figure 2 Syndeia Web Browser, Digital Thread Project dashboard, Baseline Differencing

Baseline Compare

In Figure 2 showing the Compare subtab, a Reference (starting) baseline and a Target (ending) baseline are selected at the stop and three difference tables are generated below:

Created – inter-model relations created in the period between Reference and Target
Updated – inter-model relations updated in the period between Reference and Target
Deleted – inter-model relations deleted in the period between Reference and Target

For each relation, we see the source and target artifacts plus when and by who the event was executed.

This blog post completes the review of changes to DTP management and analysis in Syndeia 3.6. The next post will cover new integrations in 3.6 for Vitech GENESYS and Zuken DS-CR/DS-E3.

Other parts in this series:

Dirk Zwemer

Dr. Dirk Zwemer (dirk.zwemer@intercax.com) is COO and Co-founder of Intercax LLC (Atlanta, GA), a supplier of MBE engineering software platforms like Syndeia and ParaMagic. He is an active teacher and consultant in the field and holds Level 4 Model Builder-Advanced certification as an OMG System Modeling Professional.