The CDIF Family of Standards is primarily designed to be used as a description of a mechanism for transferring information between CASE tools. It facilitates a successful transfer when the authors of the importing and exporting tools have nothing in common except an agreement to conform to CDIF. The language that is defined for the Transfer Format also has applicability as a general language for Import/Export from repositories. The CDIF Integrated Meta-model defined for CASE also has applicability as the basis of standard definitions for use in repositories.

The standards which form the complete family of CDIF Standards are documented in

EIA/IS-106 CDIF - CASE Data Interchange Format - Overview.

These standards cover the overall framework, the transfer format and the CDIF Integrated Meta-model.

The diagram in

Figure 1 depicts the various standards that comprise the CDIF Family of Standards. The shaded box depicts this Standard and its position in the CDIF Family of Standards.

This standard defines the Foundation subject area of the CDIF Integrated Meta-model. This subject area contains the basic objects on which all other objects, including those defined using extensibility, must be based.