Pulling the MODAF, DODAF, NAF et al Into a Common Frame of Reference

Some of the more observant amongst you might have noticed that we have a wiki that aims to cover multiple enterprise architecture frameworks (DODAF, MODAF, NATO Architecture Framework and TRAK as a minimum) as well as the use of such things in a typical systems engineering lifecycle.

This is a long slow process. The first to be covered was TRAK and now we’ve got decent coverage of the NATO Architecture Framework as well as a sprinkling of MODAF. To date there are the best part of 300 pages. There’s a lot still to do so if anyone would like to help then this would be gratefully received as it takes time to locate source material and extract the essence.

Why go to this trouble? For several reasons:

• To help. Some frameworks either don’t have much of a web presence or provide information in forms that isn’t the easiest to navigate through. MODAF has suffered in navigability as a result of being taken from the site maintained by Model Futures and squeezed into the ‘one size fits all’  corporate MoD structure. The NATO Architecture Framework and some others just offer a set of unlinked PDF documents without supporting web content. If we can extract the bare bones in terms of view definitions and link them to other views, the respective metamodel and other frameworks then this has to be better.
• To compare and contrast. All of these frameworks have a common origin, the DODAF, and have at times borrowed bits from each other so there is a lot of similarity. There are also some important differences reflecting their ages and their respective specification and user communities. It’s very difficult to see this when they are widely separated and presented in very different formats and language or terminology. If we can provide bridges between the frameworks and put the information in a similar way alongside each other then it’s much easier for the user or potential user of the frameworks. I have this belief that there will be a universal metamodel at some point. One of the reasons we separated the definition of the TRAK Viewpoints from the TRAK metamodel was to   allow for the possibility that we’d not got it right and to enable the metamodel to be re-used if needs be).
• To provide points of reference. As a lot of the frameworks are expressed in large documents it’s quite hard to make reference to a particular view or metamodel element. If each view, each term or each metamodel element is a separate wiki page it makes it much easier to make reference to - each element is addressable by a URL (which is where I’d really like the architecture models themselves to be at some point in the future) and within a namespace named after the framework (not all terms have the same meaning e.g. MODAF:View is a singular architecture view, NAF:View is a collection of subviews and TRAK:Architecture View although singular is a response to a view specification (TRAK:Viewpoint).

Being forced to read the documentation in some detail means that you do learn quite a lot. I’ve learnt that NAF:System cannot realise a capability and that NAF:Organisational Resource  (Organisation and Post = ‘Job’)  cannot have functions assigned directly only indirectly via NAF:Role.

I’d be interested if anyone has good pointers to AUSDAF documentation and very much so if any site member wanted to help to start fleshing out other frameworks.

Anyway, you can keep up to date with progress / changes on the wiki by subscribing to the RSS feed.

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External Links

• NATO Architecture Framework home - external link
• NATO Architecture Framework Views (Capability View, Operational View, Programme View, System View, Service-Oriented View, Technical View, All View)
• NATO Architecture Framework Subviews
• MODAF Viewpoints
• MODAF Views
• TRAK Views