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Concept
Zachman Framework
Summary
The Zachman Framework is an enterprise ontology and is a fundamental structure for enterprise architecture which provides a formal and structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise. The ontology is a two dimensional classification schema that reflects the intersection between two historical classifications. The first are primitive interrogatives: What, How, When, Who, Where, and Why. The second is derived from the philosophical concept of reification, the transformation of an abstract idea into an instantiation. The Zachman Framework reification transformations are: identification, definition, representation, specification, configuration and instantiation.
The Zachman Framework is not a methodology in that it does not imply any specific method or process for collecting, managing, or using the information that it describes; rather, it is an ontology whereby a schema for organizing architectural artifacts (in other words, design documents, specifications, and models) is used to take into account both who the artifact targets (for example, business owner and builder) and what particular issue (for example, data and functionality) is being addressed.
The framework is named after its creator John Zachman, who first developed the concept in the 1980s at IBM. It has been updated several times since.
The title "Zachman Framework" refers to The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture with version 3.0 being the most current. The Zachman Framework has evolved in its thirty-year history to include:
The initial framework, named A Framework for Information Systems Architecture, by John Zachman published in a 1987 article in the IBM Systems journal.
The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture, an update of the 1987 original in the 1990s extended and renamed .
One of the later versions of the Zachman Framework, offered by Zachman International as industry standard.
In other sources the Zachman Framework is introduced as a framework, originated by and named after John Zachman, represented in numerous ways, see image.
Official source
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Ontological neighbourhood
Related concepts (7)
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A view model or viewpoints framework in systems engineering, software engineering, and enterprise engineering is a framework which defines a coherent set of views to be used in the construction of a system architecture, software architecture, or enterprise architecture. A view is a representation of the whole system from the perspective of a related set of concerns. Since the early 1990s there have been a number of efforts to prescribe approaches for describing and analyzing system architectures.
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