Appendix A. STANAG Transformation Framework

220. NATO captures the definition of processes, procedures, terms, and conditions for common military or technical procedures or equipment between member countries using a Standardisation Agreement (STANAGs).

221. The NATO Standardization Agency (NSA) and Consultation, Command and Control Board (C3B) with Capability Panels (CaPs) and Capability Teams (CaTs) develop and maintain STANAGs under configuration management within NATO.

222. STANAGs form the basis for enabling technical interoperability between a wide variety of Communication and Information Systems (CIS). In particular, information exchange STANAGs are used to standardise the protocols and data formats which regulate the information exchange between various CISs. Within the NATO APP-15 such types of STANAGs are called Information Exchange Specifications (IES). In this document, STANAG shall be read as a STANAG related to an IES within NATO.

223. STANAGs constantly evolve in line with the evolution of NATO roles and derived requirements. The evolution implies the enhancement, modification and reduction of their contents. NATO has identified several gaps and areas for improvement within the current STANAGs that require action to ensure current and continual interoperability among forces and to enable the information sharing in a seamless infrastructure.

224. As NATO and Nations are evolving to achieve the vision of the NATO Network-Enabled Capability (NNEC) , it has been realized and agreed that the NNEC data strategy goals involve making data Visible, Accessible, Understandable and Interoperable. In order to support these goals, traditional text-based information exchange STANAGs need to evolve into an unambiguous, machine-interpretable format, such as the extensible mark-up language (XML).

225. A common framework and methodology to transform textual STANAGs into XML have been developed and are presented here as the STANAG Transformation Framework (STF) set of design rules.

226. With the application of the STF, NATO and Nations are provided a mechanism to start tackling the data strategy vision and facilitating the improvement of current and future STANAG development efforts.

227. The scope of the analysis is to introduce a common framework, the STF, and associated design rules and methodology to transform textual STANAGs into XML to support the NNEC data strategy goals to make data Visible, Accessible, Understandable and Interoperable in an NNEC, service-oriented architecture (SOA) based, environment.

228. The STF set of design rules also aims to assist in the development of current and future STANAGs within NATO. The STF, design rules and methodology are applicable to all information exchange STANAGs related to technical interoperability between systems and services.

229. Although it may be applicable to all types of information exchanges, it does not aim to regulate the development of standards used outside of NATO.

230. The STF is not intended to be used for transforming STANAGs that are unrelated to information exchange (e.g. STANAG 2832 - Restrictions for the Transport of Military Equipment by Rail on European Railways).

231. In this section abbreviations and concepts used in the analysis report are listed.