Department of Defense Architecture Framework

The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is an architecture framework for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that provides visualization infrastructure for specific stakeholders concerns through viewpoints organized by various views. These views are artifacts for visualizing, understanding, and assimilating the broad scope and complexities of an architecture description through tabular, structural, behavioral, ontological, pictorial, temporal, graphical, probabilistic, or alternative conceptual means. The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is an architecture framework for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that provides visualization infrastructure for specific stakeholders concerns through viewpoints organized by various views. These views are artifacts for visualizing, understanding, and assimilating the broad scope and complexities of an architecture description through tabular, structural, behavioral, ontological, pictorial, temporal, graphical, probabilistic, or alternative conceptual means. This Architecture Framework is especially suited to large systems with complex integration and interoperability challenges, and it is apparently unique in its employment of 'operational views'. These views offer overview and details aimed to specific stakeholders within their domain and in interaction with other domains in which the system will operate. The DoDAF provides a foundational framework for developing and representing architecture descriptions that ensure a common denominator for understanding, comparing, and integrating architectures across organizational, joint, and multinational boundaries. It establishes data element definitions, rules, and relationships and a baseline set of products for consistent development of systems, integrated, or federated architectures. These architecture descriptions may include families of systems (FoS), systems of systems (SoS), and net-centric capabilities for interoperating and interacting in the non-combat environment. All major U.S. DoD weapons and information technology system acquisitions are required to develop and document an enterprise architecture (EA) using the views prescribed in the DoDAF. While it is clearly aimed at military systems, DoDAF has broad applicability across the private, public and voluntary sectors around the world, and represents one of a large number of systems architecture frameworks. The first version of the development DoDAF was developed in the 1990s under the name C4ISR Architecture Framework. In the same period the reference model TAFIM, which was initiated in 1986, was further developed. The first C4ISR Architecture Framework v1.0, released 7 June 1996, was created in response to the passage of the Clinger-Cohen Act. It addressed the 1995 Deputy Secretary of Defense directive that a DoD-wide effort be undertaken to define and develop a better means and process for ensuring that C4ISR capabilities were interoperable and met the needs of the warfighter. Continued development effort resulted in December 1997 in the second version, C4ISR Architecture Framework v2.0. In August 2003 the DoDAF v1.0 was released, which restructured the C4ISR Framework v2.0 to offer guidance, product descriptions, and supplementary information in two volumes and a Desk Book. It broadened the applicability of architecture tenets and practices to all Mission Areas rather than just the C4ISR community. This document addressed usage, integrated architectures, DoD and Federal policies, value of architectures, architecture measures, DoD decision support processes, development techniques, analytical techniques, and the CADM v1.01, and moved towards a repository-based approach by placing emphasis on architecture data elements that comprise architecture products. In February 2004 the documentation of Version 1.0 was released with volume 'I: Definitions and Guidelines', 'II: Product Descriptions' and a 'Deskbook'. In April 2007 the Version 1.5 was released with a documentation of 'Definitions and Guidelines', 'Product Descriptions' and 'Architecture Data Description'. On May 28, 2009 DoDAF v2.0 was approved by the Department of Defense. The current version is DoDAF 2.02 DoDAF V2.0 is published on a public website. Other derivative frameworks based on DoDAF include the NATO Architecture Framework (NAF) and Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework. Like other EA approaches, for example The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), DoDAF is organized around a shared repository to hold work products. The repository is defined by the common database schema Core Architecture Data Model 2.0 and the DoD Architecture Registry System (DARS). A key feature of DoDAF is interoperability, which is organized as a series of levels, called Levels of Information System Interoperability (LISI). The developing system must not only meet its internal data needs but also those of the operational framework into which it is set.