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Mr Zachman's Ontology

Mike's Notes

I read about John A. Zachman 15 years ago while working on Pipi4 from 2003 to 2004. I did an exhaustive search and found much written material and video interviews on the web.
  • He is the author of an ontology called the Zachman Framework.
  • Another well-known ontology is the periodic table.
  • What he is saying is fundamentally sound.
  • It initially appears to oppose Agile, but would complement it if done correctly.
  • It's a great description of building things involving the social division of labour, such as pyramids, the Taj Mahal, battleships, aircraft, skyscrapers, or server farms.
  • Columns: What, How, When, Who, Where, and Why
  • Rows: Contextual, Conceptual, Logical, Physical, Detailed and Functioning
  • Training expensive
  • There is a lot of old archival material on the web, mainly copies of original material.

Resources

References

  • The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture: A Primer on Enterprise Engineering and Manufacturing.

Repository

  • Home > Ajabbi Research > Library > Authors > John Zachman
  • Home > Ajabbi Research > Research Projects > Computer Architecture > John Zachman
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Last Updated

11/05/2025

Mr Zachman's Ontology

By: Mike Peters
On a Sandy Beach: 04/05/2018

Mike is the inventor and architect of Pipi and the founder of Ajabbi.

Author

From the website ..."John A. Zachman is the originator of the “Framework for Enterprise Architecture” (The Zachman Framework™) which has received broad acceptance around the world as an integrative framework, an ontology for descriptive representations for Enterprises. Mr. Zachman is not only known for this work on Enterprise Architecture, but is also known for his early contributions to IBM’s Information Strategy methodology (Business Systems Planning) as well as to their Executive team planning techniques (Intensive Planning)."

Publications

Zachman had published three books, several articles [11] and forewords to more than a hundred books on related subjects. A selection:

Articles:

Zachman Framework

From Wikipedia ..."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."

Training

  • Available at FEAC Institute
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