UPDM — Section: 10.4.5.3

The text says that "The concept of an actor or resource that realizes an OperationalNode has been made explicit by using OrganizationalResource that plays an OperationalCapabilityRole in the context of an OperationalNode." There seems to be two interpretations in the DoDAF field of 'who' does 'what' on an OperationalNode (the 'where'). Some interpretations seem to be that the OperationalNode is conceptual, and can be a 'who' and a 'where'. However, in MITRE’s Activity Based Method, the metamodel specifically states that a Role performs an Operational Activity on an Operational Node. Therefore an Operational Node is a “where”, and a Role is a “who”. DoDAF 1.5 has introduced the concept of OperationalRole but it seems to be a different concept than specifying a 'who' – in other words, DoDAF 1.5 says an OperationalNode plays the OperationalRole of 'service provider', 'service consumer', or 'unanticipated user'. This is different than saying the OperationalRole is the 'who' that can be many different types of roles (besides those three). In this referenced paragraph in the UPDM spec, it would seem that the interpretation is that an OperationalNode can be a 'who', and that 'who' is specified by OperationalCapabilityRole, which can take on values "Service Provider", "Service Consumer", and "Unanticipated User". What of other roles then? Should OrganizationalRole (also in the UPDM domain metamodel) be used to specify 'who' does 'what' on an OperationalNode (the 'where')? All of this should be clearly sorted out in the UPDM domain metamodel and described clearly in the UPDM text.