ArchiMate Metamodel

The passive counterpart of the application component in the Application Layer is called a data object.

This element is used in the same way as data objects (or object types) in well-known data modeling approaches, most notably the "class" concept in UML class diagrams.

A data object can be seen as a representation of a business object, as a counterpart of the representation element in the Business Layer. The ArchiMate language does not define a specific layer for information; however, elements such as business objects and data objects are used to represent the information entities and also the logical data components that realize the business objects.