This technical report on the TM Forum Tooling Environment is an output of the Tooling Program (formerly Tooling Task Force). The charter of the Tooling Program was to address outstanding issues with TM Forum Tools. This involves streamlining and unifying the process of creation, sharing and maintenance of NGOSS artifacts throughout their lifecycle.

A high priority item for the team was to address the various compatibility issues between different tools in the Solution Frameworks (NGOSS) tool chain. The technical teams must be able to produce artifacts that can be easily used by consumers of those artifacts, be they other TM Forum technical teams or TM Forum member organizations.

The technical report documents the use cases for the production of TM Forum artifacts, and defines requirements for effective use of tools across the TM Forum technical teams. It also describes the tools currently in use by technical teams within the TM Forum in the production of the TM Forum artifacts.

The document makes recommendations for changes and improvements to existing TM Forum Solution Frameworks artifacts development processes.

The document suggests that the Solution Frameworks tooling framework should be aimed to be oriented towards the use of Domain Specific Languages in order to better address the requirement specific to each individual Solution Frameworks modeling activity and simplify the modeling process for end-users.

The document describes the process of transition of the existing TM Forum tooling environment to the end-goal seamless tool chain and suggests the stages and the timeframe in which transition should occur.

The document suggests that the cross-functional Tooling Subcommittee or a Team needs to be created to oversee the entire TM Forum tooling and ensure consistency in the modeling and artifacts creation and maintenance approaches different TM Forum teams should be following. 

For further information on the Architecture Harmonization team click here
 

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