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0042 Software Capabilities

Software capabilities are the capabilities implemented in software and supported by ITInfrastructure such as hosts, software server platforms and software servers. They are composed of, support and/or consume various digital resources represented as Asset entities. They are linked together using the ServerAssetUse relationship.

UML

SoftwareCapability entity

IT Infrastructure contains many capabilities. Each capability can be catalogued using the SoftwareCapability entity and linked to the hosting ITInfrastructure entity using the SupportedSoftwareCapability relationship.

SoftwareCapability is a Referenceable that adds the following attributes:

  • name - display name of the capability.
  • description - description of the capability.
  • capabilityType - type of the capability - for example the product name.
  • capabilityVersion - version of the capability.
  • patchLevel - any patches applied to the version.
  • source - supplier of the capability.
  • deployedImplementationType - the class of technology that is used in its implementation. Values for the deployedImplementationType attribute can be managed for consistency in a deployed implementation type valid value set.

Different organizations and tools can choose the granularity in which the capabilities are catalogued in order to provide appropriate context to assets that are managed by the capabilities and the decisions made around them.

SoftwareServerCapability entity

The SoftwareServerCapability describes a capability that is implemented in a software server.

These are the subtypes of software server capabilities defined in the open metadata types:

In addition, it is possible to augment software server capabilities with the following classifications:

  • CloudService - A capability enabled for a tenant on a cloud platform.
  • ContentCollectionManager - A manager of controlled documents and related media.
  • FileSystem - A capability that supports a store of files organized into a hierarchy of file folders for general use.
  • FileManager - A manager of a collection of files and folders.
  • NotificationManager - A software capability that is distributing events from a topic to its subscriber list.

SupportedSoftwareCapability relationship

Defines the relationship between a SoftwareCapability and the ITInfrastructure entity that hosts it. This relationship, plus the attached SoftwareCapability entity, help to build out a picture of the capabilities of a particular deployed host, software server platform or software server. Together they help to describe where and how various IT capabilities are delivered to the owning organization. This model can form the basis of traceability from business function to IT Infrastructure, particularly when combined with location information and links to the data assets and APIs.

ProcessingState classification

Defines a classification for a SoftwareCapability. The ProcessingState can be used to describe additional runtime processing information used by the component represented by the SoftwareCapability entity.

Deprecated types
  • SoftwareServerSupportedCapability is deprecated in favour of the SupportedSoftwareCapability relationship.

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