New elements: business object group and data object group
A business object group is a passive structure element, grouping several interrelated business objects into a bigger unit, including their relationships. Otherwise it has the same relations as the business object. A data object group is similar to the business object group, but it belongs to the application layer.
Justification - business object group: Information modeling often deals with large collection of interrelated concepts (business objects), especially when describing a whole organisation's information architecture. In order to break down the information capital of the organisation, several layers of grouping is needed. In my blog article (https://www.qpr.com/fi/blogi/information-architecture-datagroup, year 2019), two layers of groupings are presented on top of the business object layer: so-called data groups and main data groups. According to the new Information Management Act in Finland, three layers of grouping (data repository, data set and data group, examples below) is expected from finnish public services organisations when describing their information capital, on top of busines object layer (concepts). Currently ArchiMate business object element is used for each layer, but it's visually and conceptually challenging. Justification - data object group: groupings are also needed on logical level, so that data object can represent a logical data entity (e.g. address or a company), while logical data group can represent a larger collection of logical data elements, e.g. a company's all data elements (company name, contact info, financial information, addresses, offices, employees). Data object groups would be useful when showing which data is located at which systems at a high level. E.g. when planning to replace a large information system (supporting dozens of business processes, managing a country's all road vehicles' data) with a new, equally large one and data conversion needs to be planned in phases. ArchiMate does include a 'grouping' element, but it doesn't have the semantics of business object or data object. We tried to use it for business object groups, but it didn't work out. At another customer, we tried to use a cusotmised notation (see blog article above), but using pure ArchiMate would be better, since it's widely known and understood. This is not necessarily a minor improvement, which is expected for the planned minor release, since this includes two new elements, but please consider it to the next release, minor or major, wherever it fits. As a consultant, having worked for public service organisations, myself and some of my collegues struggle with not having as rich notation for information architecture (passive structure elements) as the rest of the ArchiMate language (active structure and behaviour elements).
Examples of business object groups: data repository: a country's all registered vehicles (road vehicles (cars, buses, trucks etc), boats, airplanes, drones, trains etc), appr. 5 millions, including their technical specifications, ownership, permissions, anuual/recurring technical checks, driver licenses (3 millions) and other permissions data set: a country's all road vehicles' technical specifications and registration information data group: see blog article above, using the different business domain - the article uses customized notation, an extension of ArchiMate, in order to visually distinguish between business objects, data objects and data groups
Comment: i tried to enter this into the Feedback and ideas forum, but since Gitlab allowes me to create this as an issue, it might end up in the Issues forum.