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NOAA Observing Systems Architecture(NOSA)
About NOSA
About Architecture
Observing System Inventory
Relationship to PPBES
NOAA Programs and Environmental Observation Requirements
Observation Requirements vs System Capabilities Tool
How is NOSA used?
Target Architecture
Definitions
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What is an Enterprise Architecture?

The term "enterprise architecture" is used as if it were understood by business and technology professionals. In reality, these groups have very different understandings of the term. Technology professionals start from a structured family of technical guidelines including concepts, principles, rules, patterns and interfaces, and the relationships among them. Business professionals tend to ignore the term or view it as an IT-only issue.

There are several useful definitions of "Enterprise Architecture":

  1. An Enterprise is a purposeful or industrious undertaking that involves tangible (e.g., funding and people) or intangible (e.g., goodwill and confidence) contributions from many member organizations
  2. An Architecture is an arrangement of features and functions that maximizes some objective.
  3. An Enterprise Architecture is a comprehensive description and arrangement of the enterprise elements that shows how they interrelate. A properly defined architecture provides an integrated overview of the enterprise and how it functions. Thus, it provides the enterprise with a context for analysis and decisions.
Enterprise Architecture - the issue in NOAA

In NOAA, the recent senior level focus has been on an observing systems architecture whereas the IT or CIO community has focused on the IT infrastructure component of the enterprise. NOAA must ensure that its enterprise architecture is a fully integrated business, observing system and IT architecture - and not something defined solely by the observing system or CIO community in response to their view of the enterprise. The enterprise architecture should be viewed as an asset - not in terms of platforms, hardware, software and so on, but in terms of enabling a strategic capability for accomplishing the mission of NOAA.

 
How do you represent an architecture?

The first step is to determine the purpose for the architecture from the kinds of business questions an organization asks; the who, what, when, why, where and how of everything about the organization. The result of this is an 'entity relationship diagram'. Data Management Architecture Relationship Diagram

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