Developing Standards with AIDM Framework

Owned by Vanni Sanvincenti
Last updated: 01 Feb 2024 by Jean-Christophe Cornu
3 min read

How AIDM is used to develop Standards

The Airline Industry Data Model (AIDM) methodology defines an agile, model driven approach to building modern data exchange standards under the Passenger Standards Conference.  

All new data exchange standards must follow the AIDM methodology and leverage industry agreed data definitions in the AIDM repository.

There are five stages in the methodology, including initiation, business requirements and modeling, logical and physical modeling, schema generation and validation, and implementation.   Business and technical groups work together in order to build the necessary messages to support the standard. 

 

 

 

 

 

There are four key roles involved in data exchange standard development – the Initiator, Business Group, Technology Group and the Boards jointly approving the standards

Initiator

Any organization can request a new standard or change to an existing standard under the Conference.  Note that only IATA members and strategic partners may attend the Boards and Groups developing and endorsing the standard.

Business Group

Comprised of airlines and strategic partners responsible for developing the business requirements for a standard.  All data exchange standards must have a business owning group.

Technology Group

Comprised of airlines and strategic partners responsible for supporting Business Groups with the development of technical solutions (models, messages, etc.).

Boards

Joint endorsement between the business owning Board and the Architecture and Technology Strategy Board is required before any new data exchange standard or change to a data exchange standard is effective.

 

Requests for new standards or changes to existing standards can be raised by any organization.  Requests should be routed through a Board or Group secretary if known, or generally through standards@iata.org.  After an internal triage, the secretary will submit the request as an agenda item on the impacted business Board or Group’s workplan to be addressed.

All data exchange standards (such as EDIFACT, XML, or JSON messages) must have a business owning Group. This group will operate under a business owning Board that oversees the business requirements that the data exchange fulfils, including the business process aspects of the standards. No data exchange standard can exist without a business owner.

The business owning Group works together with Groups under the Architecture and Technology Strategy Board (ATSB) to develop any necessary changes to data exchange standards, and both the Business Owning Board and the Architecture and Technology Strategy Board concurrently endorse changes.

This involves a continuous cycle of developing requirements, business processes and procedural standards within the business owning group; and development of technical solutions in accordance with AIDM methodology under the oversight of the groups under the ATSB.

Using agile development cycles, Groups can generate alpha and beta releases at any point throughout the development cycle in order to have full visibility on the nature of changes impacting the messages much earlier in the process before a major release point