Multiple Stereotypes can not be put on a single item

[gedwardroberts]

Archi Version

5.8.0

Operating System

Window 11

Archi Plug-ins

None

Description

Multiple Stereotypes should be able to be put on a single item... cannot currently

Steps to reproduce

No response

[jbsarrodie]

Hi,

Only specialization profiles are implemented at the moment. The target is to add other (non specialization) profiles some day. The design choice is to have maximum one specialization profile per element, but multiple other profiles if needed.

[gedwardroberts]

why... that is not in the spec?

[gedwardroberts]

So I am not sure where you get the term "specalization profiles" that is certainly a term not in the ArchiMate spec... in the ArchiMate spec it says "Note that multiple specialization profiles may be assigned to the same generalized concept; in the default notation, these are shown as a comma-separated list (“«specialization 1, specialization 2»”)." which clearly shows that multiple stereotypes can be applied to a concept... if by "specialization profiles" is meant that there is one stereotype where one gets it notation (assuming that you could assign some special notation to a stereotype) then I could see there being just one choice...

[jbsarrodie]

On the wording side: ArchiMate does not use the term "stereotype", except when refering to UML's stereotypes as a comparison. The customization of ArchiMate concepts is done through profiles (named set of attributes), and specialization profiles whose intent is to create custom types based off "standard" ArchiMate concept types.

if by "specialization profiles" is meant that there is one stereotype where one gets it notation (assuming that you could assign some special notation to a stereotype) then I could see there being just one choice...

That's mostly that. The thing is the wording used in the spec (even in 4) introduces some contradictions. On the one hand, as you pointed out, the spec says that "multiple specialization profiles may be assigned to the same generalized concept", but on the other hand, it also says that a specialized element can restrict the list of relationships that applies to such new type, and that a "new graphical notation could be introduced for a specialized concept", both of which are exclusive things as (for example) an element can have only one notation at a time.

That's why in Archi's implementation of specialization profiles, a concept will have at most one specialization. But if one day profiles are fully implemented, a concept will be allowed to have one specialization, but many other profiles.