Technical Standards Profile

TV-1.

Product Definition. The Technical Standards Profile collects the various systems standards rules that implement and sometimes constrain the choices that can be made in the design and implementation of an architecture.

Product Purpose. Primarily, this product is concerned with delineating systems standards rules and conventions that apply to architecture implementations. When the standards profile is tied to the system elements to which they apply, TV-1 serves as the bridge between the SV and TV.

Product Detailed Description. TV-1 consists of the set of systems standards rules that govern systems implementation and operation of that architecture. The technical standards generally govern what hardware and software may be implemented and what system data formats may be used (i.e., the profile delineates which standards may be used to implement the systems, system hardware/software items, communications protocols, and system data formats). TV-1 is constructed as part of a given architecture and in accordance with the architecture purpose. Typically, this will involve starting with one or more overarching reference models or standards profiles, such as OMB’s TRM [OMB, 2003], DoD TRM, or the Joint Technical Architecture (JTA) [DISA, 2002]. Using these reference models or standards profiles, the architect should select the service areas relevant to the architecture. The identification of relevant services within service areas subsequently points to agreed-upon standards. The source document used for identifying each standard must also be cited.

In most cases, especially in describing architectures with less than a Military Servicewide scope, TV-1 consists of identifying the applicable portions of the JTA and other existing technical standards guidance documents, tailoring those portions, as needed, in accordance with the latitude allowed in these guidance documents, and filling in any gaps. This process of tailoring standards guidance from higher level, more general guidance, is called creating a standards profile. For example, a DoD mission area might create a common mission-area standards profile using TV-1. Each program or project in that mission area would further refine this common profile to create its own standards profile. Care should be taken in the refinement process to ensure that systems compliant with the child profile would cont inue to be interoperable with systems compliant with the parent profile. If service-level JTA-like documents are used, then the relationship between the JTA and those documents must be stated. Some of the existing technical standards guidance documents are described in the Deskbook [see section on URRs in the Deskbook].

For a given domain, TV-1 may also state a common standard implementation for a particular standard, not just list the standard. Many standards can be implemented in compliant, but not interoperable ways, such as MIL STD 6016.

The standards are referenced as relationships to the systems, system functions, system data, hardware/software items or communication protocols in SV-1, SV-2, SV-4, SV-6, OV-7, and SV-11 products, where applicable. That is, each standard listed in the profile should be associated with the SV elements that implement or use the standard (e.g., SV-1, SV-2, SV-4, SV-6, OV-7 and SV-11 element standards, where applicable). Standards for OV-7 and SV-11 do not include system data standards such as naming conventions, attribute lists, and field types, but refer to the source for the data entities (e.g., DoD XML Registry), or the data modeling standard used (e.g., IDEF1X).