Facilitating the Co-evolution of Standards and Models

The Information Model (IM) specified by the Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) Industry Specification Group (ISG) at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) provides a consolidated view of all information elements used in the various interfaces defined in the NFV standards. Its purpose is to enable quick identification of gaps and inconsistencies in the standards and in implementations of the standards. As the standards are increasing in volume, manual approaches for ensuring their consistency and their co-evolution with the IM are becoming unsustainable, especially considering the rapid release cycles. In this article, we present a model-based approach for facilitating the co-evolution of standards and models and the current state of its prototypical implementation put into place to support the work within the NFV Interfaces and Architecture (IFA) working group. The initial results from the application of the approach were reported to the NFV IFA working group and are expected to contribute towards maintaining the high quality of the standards as they continue to evolve.