Operational Views (OV) [Logical Views]

OV-7 Information Model

Information Models (OV-7) address the information perspective on an operational architecture.

Note: the name of this MODAF view was changed from ‘Logical Data Model’ following the MODAF Technical Group meeting on 9 February 2007.

Background:

The Information Model (OV-7) is used to document the business information requirements and structural business process rules of the architecture. It describes the information that is associated with the information exchanges of the architecture. Included are information items, their attributes or characteristics, and their inter-relationships.

Usage:

Data objects:

The data in an OV-7 can include:

Note that an Operational Information Entity within an OV-7 may be an Information Element in an OV-3 or an Activity Flow Object in an OV-5.

Representation:

Detailed Product Description:

The OV-7 Information Model describes the structure of an Architecture domain’s information types and the structural business process rules (defined in the Architecture’s Operational Viewpoint). It provides a definition of Architecture domain (or business) information types, their attributes or characteristics, and their interrelationships.

The Architecture elements for OV-7 include descriptions of information entity, attribute, and relationship types. Attributes can be associated with entities and with relationships, depending on the purposes of the Architecture.

Note that MODAF talks about ‘information’ in the Operational Viewpoint and ‘data’ in the System Viewpoint. The intention of this is that OV-7 describes information or data of importance to the business (e.g. information products that might be referred to in doctine, SOPs etc.) whereas SV-11 describes data relevant at the system level.

The purpose of a given Architecture helps to determine the level of detail needed in this Product. This level of detail will be driven in particular by the criticality of the interoperability requirements.


Example OV-7 (Entity-Relationship) (Source: DCSA)

Often, different organisations may use the same Entity name to mean very different kinds of information having different internal structure. This situation could pose significant interoperability risks, as the information models may appear to be compatible, e.g. each having a Target Track data Entity but having different and incompatible interpretations of what Target Track means.

An OV-7 may be necessary for interoperability when shared information syntax and semantics form the basis for greater degrees of information systems interoperability, or when an information repository is the basis for integration and interoperability among business processes and between capabilities.

OV-7 defines the Architecture domain’s information classes and the relationships among them. For example, if the domain is missile defence, some possible information classes may be trajectory and target with a relationship that associates a target with a certain trajectory. OV-7 defines each kind of information classes associated with the Architecture domain, mission, or business as its own Entity, with its associated attributes and relationships. These Entity definitions correlate to OV-3 information elements and OV-5 inputs, outputs, and controls.

OV-7 should not be confused with the M3. Architecture data types for the MODAF (i.e. MODAF-defined Architecture data elements, AV-2 data types, and M3 entities) are things like Node and Operational Activity. The M3 does provide a specification of the underlying semantics for MODAF Products such as OV-7. OV-7 describes information about a specific Architecture domain.

UML provides a natural modelling language for creating Information Models (via class diagrams). A UML example is provided below.


Example OV-7 (UML)

Page version 1.1, dated 4th April 2007

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