System Architect's main strengths are in its flexibility, functionality and its highly configurable interface. The tool provides comprehensive support for Business & Process Modeling using IDEF, CSC's Catalyst or John Zachman's Zachman framework. Data Modeling, Structured and OO Analysis & Design are also included as standard in the tool.
Gartner Group claims "point solutions should only be considered for one-off's or for use in extreme circumstances" and should no longer be considered the norm. The future is predicted to be in Enterprise Modeling and in recognition of this there is now a fifth market segment emerging. Enterprise Modeling incorporates all of the above and focuses on communication, sharing information, information re-use, quality, standards and about managing change. System Architect provides you this with a single integrated technology. One tool, one GUI, one repository and one supplier.
System Architect can be run standalone or in a multi-user environment. The tool is fully Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) enabled thus providing links to other packages and tools in the outside world.
We are actively working on exporting and importing our extensible repository in XML. The plan is to use XML as an interchange mechanism with other tools. Extensions to the System Architect repository will be treated the same as standard items in the tool's meta model as far as XML export and import is concerned.