NTV-1 - Standards Profile
The Standards Profile (NTV-1) provides a list of standards that guide and constrain the implementation of systems as defined in the various subviews of the NATO System View.
Defining the Standards
In HOPEX NAF, a standard is a specific independent notion that can be created in order to establish a list. The standard notion encompasses all the technical and non technical items that are recommended by the company for designing the architecture.
A standard can be linked to the definition of repository items such as applications, databases, artifacts, resource architectures and communication protocols. This link, even though non mandatory, is useful in helping to provide a more accurate definition of the standard.
For example, if a computing engineer process states that it is mandatory to use UML for application design, then UML can be defined in the tool as a standard. This standard will not, however, be linked to any object of the repository.
The sections below indicate how standards can be described. For more information on the metamodel behind the standard notion, see NTV-1 Standards Profile and NTV-2 Standards Forecast.
Standard Decomposition
A standard can be decomposed into sub-parts. Each part is called a Standard Component. A standard component can reference another existing standard, in which case the name of the component can be automatically created from the name of the standard on which it is based (this is not mandatory and the user can rename the component).
For example, the DNS standard is defined from different smaller standards:
• DNS
• IETF STD 13:1987
• RFC 1034:1987
• RFC 1035:1987
Standard and Approving Organizations
A standard is approved/created by an organization. For example, HTML is created by the W3C and UML is created by the OMG.
Standard Usability
Declaring a list of standards can be useful, however, comparing this list to the standard that is used to implement a resource architecture is more beneficial. This comparison can be made if the components of the architecture detail the standards on which they are based. To make the comparison, a special link exists between architecture items and standards.
An application, for example, can be cited as a defining item for a standard while another application can be based on this standard.The Open Office tool can be cited as the standard documentation tool while a business application used to generate meeting reports can be based on this standard.
The NTV-1 Template Report
The NTV-1 report template produces a report that gives a graphical understanding of the evolution of the standards in relation to planned systems of the architecture.
The template uses two parameters to generate the report chapters:
• The first parameter is the Architecture which indicates the architecture to be analyzed.
• The Standard Subset parameter. This is an optional value that is used to reduce the scope of the study. This parameter is set with the standards described in the architecture. In this case, the NTV-1 report focuses on this set of standards. The HOPEX objects used to set this parameter are standards.
The NTV-1 Standards Profile Chapter
This chapter presents the standards and guidelines that apply to the analyzed architecture(s). Paragraphs NSV-1 to each standard follow, listing the elements that use the standard in question.