Zachman
The Zachman Framework has been claimed to be a de facto world standard.
It is possible to draw a comparison between the Zachman Framework and the Periodic Table. In the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, atoms are identified as the building blocks of all matter. In the same way, the cells in the Zachman Framework are identified as the building blocks of enterprises.
The columns of the framework, which have no order of importance, represent unique abstractions of the enterprise, which assist in the simplification of any single model that is built. The cell models are described as "primitive models", in that each contains a single variable. "Composite models", which are comprised of two or more variables, have to be included in the design of solutions to satisfy business requirements.
Each cell model in each column constrains the content of the cell below. This ensures an alignment between the intentions of enterprise owners, as represented by Row 2 of the framework, and whatever is implemented to build the enterprise, as represented by Row 5 of the framework.
The granularity of detail in the Zachman Framework is a property of any individual cell, regardless of the row. Depending on the requirement, planning or implementation, a cell model may contain relatively little detail or may be extremely detailed.
TOGAF
The TOGAF Architecture Framework supports four architecture domains:
1. Business (or business process) architecture, which defines:
- business strategy,
- governance, and
- organisation.
It supports the key business processes of an organisation.
2. Applications architecture, which provides a blueprint for the individual application systems to be deployed,
the interactions between the application systems, and their relationship to the core business processes of the organisation.
3. Data architecture, which describes the structure of an organisation's
- logical and physical data assets, and
- the associated data management resources.
4. Technology architecture, which describes the software infrastructure intended to support the deployment of core, mission-critical applications.
DoDAF (United States Department of Defense Architectural Framework)
DoDAF views are organised into four basic view sets:
- Overarching All View (AV)
- Operational View (OV)
- Systems View (SV)
- Technical Standards View (TV)
Only a subset of the full DoDAF view set is usually created for each system development.
FEAF (United States Office of Management and Budget Federal Enterprise Architecture)
The FEA is currently a collection of reference models that develop a common taxonomy and ontology for describing IT resources. These include:
- Performance Reference Model
- Business Reference Model
- Service Component Reference Model
- Data Reference Model
- Technical Reference Model
MODAF (United Kingdom Ministry of Defence Architectural Framework)
No apparent methodology is associated with MODAF. A practice perspective covers five stakeholder groups or Communities of Interest (CoI) in the "MODAF CoI Deskbooks". No apparent modelling technique is specified. For example, OV-5 products (activity models) could be represented as IDEF0, BPMN, UML Activity Diagrams, or any other commonly used process modelling syntax.
The key aspect of MODAF is that it encourages a data-driven approach to architecture.
The specification is underpinned by the MODAF Meta-Model (M3). The M3 defines types of architectural elements and the relationships between them - e.g. organisations, operational nodes, systems, capabilities, etc. MODAF-compliant architectures are contiguous, coherent models of the enterprise, which conform to the M3.
AGATE (French Délégation Générale pour l'Armement Atelier de Gestion de l'ArchiTEcture des systèmes d'information et de communication)
An AGATE model is organised into five views:
- Stakes, Objectives, and context about the system.
- Business architecture: describes organisations and business processes managed by the modellised
information system.
- Service-oriented architecture: describes the services of the system.
- Logical architecture of the system.
- Physical architecture of the systems, and hardware and software products used in this architecture.