Mapping the UML to the Zachman framework

Abstract

This article offers an overview of the Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework (ZEAF) and examines how the Unified Modeling Language (UML) can be used in describing enterprise architecture. The ZEAF is a classification scheme that organizes descriptive representations into a matrix of six distinct stakeholder perspectives and six unique concerns or aspects yielding a normalized approach in which, as a rule, particular cell content cannot be found in more than one cell. This paper presents a comparative review of four approaches for mapping UML onto ZEAF, which despite the above rule, use the same diagram types differently. At first, this appeared to be a problem, but our analysis discovered that it is result of UML's rich and divers notation. This paper also attempts to answer several questions related to these different mappings recognizing an opportunity to extend ZEAF into a multidimensional representation.