Service Catalogue Importer Tool for Sparx EA

It is not unusual for SOA projects to start to create a list of services using a spreadsheet. However, this list will increase over time and must be well managed to support discoverability and reusability of services. This importer tool is useful when using Sparx Enterprise Architect to model services, by automating the import of the list of services.

This tool is a modification of Geert Bellekens’ “Simple VBA Excel to EA importer” published in his website (http://bellekens.com/2013/04/30/simple-vba-excel-to-ea-importer-v3/).

Service Taxonomy support

This tool was designed to support Service Taxonomy (i.e. by layer, by function), using Class Stereotype and Package Structure. Of course different Service Architects use different approaches to Service Taxonomy, so feel free to adapt the code to your needs.

Preparing the Service Catalogue for Sparx EA

The spreadsheet was designed to include the following catalogue information:

• Service Name – service name based on your service naming standards.
• Stereotype – this is the class stereotype. I usually use it to specify the service taxonomy (i.e. Business Service, Utility Service… or any other taxonomy you use as part of your service architecture).
• Service Description – a brief description about the service
• Operation – service operation name.
• Version – service version.
• Complexity – usually used for estimation purposes.
• Reference Model information – the Reference Model columns where added to categorise the services and create the respective structure. A domain model (ideally derived from the organisation’s business context) is usually used here.

The template provided in this post includes few lines with examples to illustrate its functionality.

When populating the spreadsheet, please use null to specify an empty field.

Importing the Catalogue into Sparx EA

In Sparx EA, select the folder where you want your Service Catalogue to be created.

In Excel, click on “Import Services to Sparx EA” button under the Add-Ins tab.

Services, operations and respective structure will be automatically created in Sparx EA.

To finalise, I just would like to add Geert’s statement from his original post:

“Both the Excel file as the VBA code embedded in it is free for use. Just be kind and leave the reference to my name in the code if you use it.”

And (of course!) the file: ServiceCatalogueImporter_v1