An element's profile is formed by a collection of properties of that element you can assign values to. A basic profile, with general properties like name and documentation, is assigned to every object. Next to this basic profile, you can assign additional profiles to objects. This allows you to specify specific element properties that are needed for a specific type of analysis for example.

Adding and removing profiles can be done on the Profiles tab of the Properties pane. In this window, the profiles that can be assigned are listed. The profiles with a check mark have already been assigned. By selecting the Apply recursively on contents check box at the top, you can recursively assign a profile to all model elements within the selection.

Activated profiles (left) show the associated properties on the Properties tab (right)

Via the Properties tab of the Properties pane, the properties of the profiles can be read and changed. The properties are grouped per profile. By expanding a profile on the Properties tab, you can view the properties of that profile. The basic profile contains all properties that are assigned to an object by default. You do not need to assign the basic profile yourself.

Defining and using your own profiles

Enterprise Studio allows you to define your own profiles and use them. With this possibility, you can define and use new properties in a model. Enterprise Studio will report these self-defined profiles in the same way as the standard profiles, and also views (view filters) on these profiles are possible. This mechanism can be useful in a project, department, or organization to define and use certain properties not available in the standard profiles.

Defining profiles

Defining your own profiles is not technically complex, but can have major consequences, for example for compatibility with new releases and possible conflicts with existing profiles. The use of self-defined profiles within an organization requires mutual agreements within the organization. Contact your application administrator for these issues.

Defining your own profiles is done by creating custom profile definitions in the Metamodeler. For more information, please refer to Creating a custom profile definition.

Using profiles

After you have created custom profile definitions, the validated customizations can be made available to only a single model package by applying the customizations to an existing model package with embedded metamodels. The configuration changes will remain confined to this model package. If the customizations need to be available in the tool configuration, you need to export them to the tool configuration. That way the customizations will be available to all users.

Missing profile definitions

When exchanging models it is important that all users use the same profile definitions, to prevent loss of information. Enterprise Studio will usually give a warning if the appropriate definitions of profiles or profile attributes are not available. Note that mostly it will not detect version differences between profile definitions.

Assignments of missing profiles are automatically removed from the model, resulting in loss of model information. If you would like to keep this information, then you should close the model without saving changes, restore the profile definitions and reopen the model in a new Enterprise Studio session.

Assignments of missing profile attributes must be removed explicitly before you will be able to open and edit the model. You should only do this when the information in these profiles is not valuable anymore because this information will be lost when removing these profiles. When the information needs to be preserved, the profile definitions need to be restored first. Enterprise Studio will keep refusing to open the model until the unknown attributes have been removed or the missing profile definitions have been restored.