Review of the Bristol Local Group event on 28th September 2005 -
“The Tool Vendors’ Response to Architectural
Frameworks”
Two presentations from the meeting are now available:
In June, Bristol Local Group held the first
of two meetings on Architectural Frameworks in general and MoDAF
in particular, with contributions from MoD and academia. This,
the second meeting, was the tool vendors’ turn to put their point
of view. Forty-six people were present to hear three excellent
speakers giving their diverse views.
Fran Thom, from Artisan, showed how UML,
SysML and MoDAF formed a natural progression, each being founded
on the strengths and wide acceptance of the previous. The strength
of a tool is to make systems expressed in MoDAF form readable and
usable by a wider audience than those who fully understand UML.
This can be achieved by tailoring the language and the visibility
of information to the type of user.
Toby Sumpter, from The Salamander
Organisation, warned about the potential divisiveness of the MoDAF
views if individual views are owned by different parts of MoD – as
their names suggest will happen. The tools need to be able to
present a holistic view, being interpretable by soldiers as well
as technicians to give a common understanding of the system and
its operation.
Martin Owen, from Telelogic, showed how
requirements and design needed to work together, albeit not
necessarily supported in the same tool but in an integrated
suite. In this way both high and low level design could be
appropriately accommodated, both driven from linked requirement
sets.
As there hadn’t been much
time for questions at the first meeting, Dave Mawby and Ian
Bailey, from the MoDAF team, and Rick Adcock, from Cranfield
University, joined the three presenters to answer questions from
the audience, summarised below.
- Where are we today
with MoDAF? The Internet version
of Issue 1 has been placed on the web today.
- Are there frameworks
for use in commercial areas where there is no coordinated
customer? Architecture frameworks
did not arise in defence (eg Zachman) and are really only a way
of presenting the business rules of whatever industry you are
in.
- Is there a security
view? Whilst there are some in
TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework), there isn’t one
in MoDAF. Security will percolate the whole model, possibly as
attributes of information, rather than be confined to a separate
view.
- Is the static MoDAF
analysis suitable for the fast-moving battle-space, where the
soldier taking initiative causes the unexpected?
It is possible to build dynamics that bridge between static
states.
- Do the different
models in the Telelogic scheme force consistency, as a single
model would? The various models
are built on a common data model (or meta-model) in different
data repositories. There are active links between them.
- MoD personnel change
posts frequently; will MoDAF-related work need to be undertaken
by outside contractors? There is
already a lot of outsourcing and, yes, it is difficult to get
new skills into the MoD. It is hoped that MoDAF will assist MoD
personnel to express what they want in a consistent way, rather
than them necessarily being skilled in the capture process. The
source of information would need to be captured, but the source
would not need to be the one to capture it.
- The tendency for
people to shy away from learning the models will mean that
purchasers of complex systems will not know what they are buying
and, hence, will buy the wrong thing.
Already, by the policy of moving people from one post to another
(possibly unrelated) one, purchasers may lack domain knowledge
or purchasing skills. The introduction of MoDAF will not worsen
this.
- If each organisation
has the freedom to choose what they capture about a system, how
will this benefit integration of independently acquired systems?
Exemplar guides will be produced to show how to achieve
particular tasks; this should encourage consistency. However,
one view was that a project cannot be required to capture more
information than is currently useful to it. This was in
contrast to another view that there may have to be certain
mandated information recorded. “We have thrown you a
dictionary, now you have to learn how to write novels”
- What about
Configuration Management? This is
still a massive problem, currently without taxonomy.
- Is there cooperation
between tool vendors? MoDAF
mandates how to store information, so one tool can put data into
the repository and another take it out. Vendors will compete on
the usability of their tools, not on the information they will
produce.
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