Development of a Data Architecture for the NWS Hydrologic Services Program

The development of effective integrated software systems implies examination and classification of the data needs of the software system's domain. The Hydrologic Research Laboratory of the NWS Office of Hydrology has been preparing an architecture of the data needs of the Hydrologic Services Program of the NWS. The data architecture is expressed in the form of a logical data model using class association diagrams, one of the artifacts of the UML approach to object oriented analysis and design. This paper describes the rationale for this effort, the data modeling process that is being used, and a description of the products produced and their relevance to the more general software engineering approach. Examples of the data model are also discussed.