Archimate is an ‘Open’ modeling language aimed at representing enterprise architecture. It’s a single-diagram-type visual language, very similar to my own ideas. Multiple “Views” exist representing the same fundamental model in accordance with different perspectives. It uses node colors, shapes, and symbols to signify the types of elements and their essence.
It was build by “The Open Group”, which means its related to TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework).
Archimate “core” framework covers the Subjects, Behaviors, and Objects in a business across 3 “layers” - business, application, and technology.
From https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/archimate/what-is-archimate/
Passive Structure is like the subject of a sentence, the behavior is the verb, the active structure is the object. “Computer Serves Ticket” is an example of each in sentence form.
The “Layers” don’t seem all that useful. They are organized in accordance with “services” and what realizes those services. The business runs on applications. The applications run on technologies.
From https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/archimate/what-is-archimate/
The ‘full’ framework adds a few more layers, and a special “Motivation” extension which includes requirements, goals, principles, and drivers.
There are multiple softwares that support Archimate. The ‘official’ version is the Open Source “Archi”, which is pretty good.
This is a great great article explaining how this works with some great example diagrams:
The ArchiMate® Enterprise Architecture Modeling Language