It was interesting to read today that the Zachman website has now published the Zachman Framework Version 3 and refers to it as an enterprise ontology. Here is a quote from the website:

The Zachman Framework™ is an ontology – a theory of the existence of a structured set of essential components of an object for which explicit expressions is necessary and perhaps even mandatory for creating, operating, and changing the object (the object being an Enterprise, a department, a value chain, a “sliver,” a solution, a project, an airplane, a building, a product, a profession or whatever or whatever).

The Zachman Framework™ IS NOT a methodology for creating the implementation (an instantiation) of the object. The Framework IS the ontology for describing the Enterprise. The Framework(ontology) is a STRUCTURE whereas a methodology is a PROCESS. A Structure is NOT a Process. A Structure establishes definition whereas a Process provides Transformation.

Processes based on ontological structure will be predictable and produce repeatable results (for example, Chemistry, based on the Periodic Table).

It is quite an announcement to make that the framework is an ontology and i hope a formal OWL or Frames based model will follow. For more information visit Zachman.com