The UML 2 implementation of ARIS UML Designer 9.x and the following versions is based on a completely new architecture providing much better UML support than ARIS UML Designer 7.x and a new flexible and user-definable way of integration of business process and UML modeling. As a consequence all UML 2 object, connection, attribute and model types in the ARIS Method are pure UML 2 types.
Basically the UML migration creates new UML 2 elements and new UML 2 diagrams corresponding to the existing UML 1.4 content. Only UML 1.4 elements and diagrams which had been created or at least saved by ARIS UML Designer 7.x are migrated. Such elements and diagrams are tagged with a special UML Designer flag in the database. UML 1.4 diagrams and elements which had been created by an ARIS 7.x client without UML Designer license and which had never been loaded and saved by ARIS UML Designer 7.x are ignored by the UML migration.
By default all UML 1.4 elements without occurrences in non-UML diagrams and all UML 1.4 diagrams are deleted at the end of the migration process unless the option Do not delete converted UML elements has been set. Setting this option makes only sense if the UML 1.4 elements and diagrams provide information which is not handled by the UML migration such as user-defined attributes or other non-UML attribute content. Such information must be migrated manually or by a user-defined script.
If UML 1.4 elements and diagrams are not deleted by the UML migration, their UML Designer flag is removed in the database so that from that time on they are handled as standard ARIS content and no longer as special UML content in ARIS.
All UML 1.4 elements which had not been deleted (either because they occur in a classical ARIS diagram or because the do-not-delete-option had been set) are connected to their corresponding UML 2 element by a re-usage link. If, for example, an EPC function occurred in a UML 1.4 use case diagram as UML use case it has a re-usage link to the corresponding UML 2 use case.
Warning
Although migrated UML 1.4 diagrams can be opened in ARIS Designer their layout is most probably corrupted, because ARIS Designer cannot handle UML-specific things like edges visualizing an object (for example associations) or edges connected to other edges. These diagrams should be deleted as soon as their additional information had been migrated manually.
UML 2 root elements (that is, packages, models and profiles which are not owned by other UML 2 elements) are created in the ARIS group containing the corresponding UML 1.4 root element so that the same user permissions are applied to them.
According to the UML 2 specification only packages, models and profiles do not require an owning UML element, that is only these three types can directly exist in an ARIS group. Therefore all other UML elements and all UML diagrams must be owned by another UML element in ARIS UML Designer 9 and the following versions. In ARIS UML Designer 7.x UML elements and UML diagrams can exist and not be part of the containment hierarchy of a package, model or profile. If such an element is migrated a default owner is created for the element in the ARIS group. If, for example, a class without owner is migrated, the UML migration creates a default package for the migrated class. If an attribute or operation is migrated, the UML migration creates a default class owned by default package for the attribute or operation in the ARIS group of the attribute or operation.
The GUID of each UML 2 element is calculated based on the GUID of its original UML 1.4 element. If the same UML 1.4 element is contained in different databases, these databases can be merged after having been migrated to UML 2 without duplicating the corresponding UML 2 element. Do not merge not yet migrated UML 1.4 elements into a database which contained the same UML 1.4 elements and which has already been migrated to UML 2. Otherwise, if started again, the UML 2 migration will create new corresponding UML 2 elements having the same GUIDs like the ones created by the previous migration.
Warning
ARIS 7.x standard functionalities like Merge or Definition copy did not support UML-1.4-specific structures entirely. Therefore they could cause certain inconsistencies in the UML 1.4 structure of the database like attributes and operations owned by more than one class (that is, the classes showed the same attributes and operations in diagrams or property dialogs). The UML 2 migration can handle such inconsistencies but might not always create the expected result. If, for example, a UML 1.4 operation is owned by two different UML 1.4 classes the corresponding UML 2 operation is owned by exactly one of the two corresponding UML 2 classes and the other UML 2 class does not show this operation in diagrams or its properties dialog at all. We recommend fixing such inconsistencies in ARIS UML Designer 7.x before migrating a database to UML 2.