For ease of understanding; the DM2 LDM is presented in groups of semantically related concepts into clusters. These clusters are categorized as Principle Architectural Constructs and Supporting Architectural Constructs. The Principle Architectural Constructs are the fundamental building blocks necessary to describe an enterprise's internal and external behavior and structure. These are as follows:
Performers: Any entity - human, automated, or any aggregation of human and/or automated - that performs an activity and provides a capability.
Resource Flows: The behavioral and structural representation of the interactions between Activities (which are performed by Performers) that is both temporal and results in the flow or exchange of objects such as information, data, materiel, and performers.
Information and Data: Representations (descriptions) of things of interest and necessary for the conduct of activities. Information is the state of a something of interest that is materialized -- in any medium or form -- and communicated or received.
Rules: How rules, standards, agreements, constraints, and regulations and are relevant to architectures. A principle or condition that governs behavior; a prescribed guide for conduct or action
Goals: How goals, visions, objectives, and effects relate and bear on architectures. A desired state of a Resource
Capability: The ability to achieve a Desired Effect under specified [performance] standards and conditions through combinations of ways and means [activities and resources] to perform a set of activities.
Services: A mechanism to enable access to a set of one or more capabilities , where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description. The mechanism is a Performer. The "capabilities" accessed are Resources -- Information, Data, Materiel, Performers, and Geo-political Extents.
Project: All forms of planned activities that are responsive to visions, goals, and objectives that aim to change the state of some situation. A temporary endeavor undertaken to create Resources or Desired Effects.
Reification: The process of reifying or to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing. Reification, in DoDAF 2, is used to introduce the concept of the varying levels of architectural descriptions or refinement and traceability between the levels.
Organizational Structure: Representations of the organization types, organizations and individuals that is present in the architecture.
The Supporting Architectural Constructs providing architectural properties and attributes are as follows:
Measures: All form of measures (metrics) applicable to architectures including needs satisfaction measures, performance measures, interoperability measures, organizational measures, and resource physical measures (e.g., mass.). The magnitude of some attribute of an individual.
Locations: A point or extent in space that may be referred to physically or logically.
Pedigree: The origin and the history of something; broadly: background, history.