1.2 What is Energistics Common Technical Architecture (CTA)?

The Energistics Common Technical Architecture (CTA) is a set of technology, standards, and best practices that provides a common foundation of shared resources for use across Energistics domain standards (Figure 1.2-1). The purpose of the CTA is to make it easier to implement one or all of Energistics domain standards. Ultimately the CTA improves the interoperability and efficiency of software and other technologies that implement the Energistics domain standards.

Where possible, the Energistics CTA leverages existing related standards, and, as necessary, tailors these standards to meet the needs of upstream oil and gas and the Energistics community.

The CTA is realized in these main ways:

• A common set of data object schemas that are shared by the domain standards
• Libraries to implement functionality (when available). These libraries may be from other standards organizations that Energistics standards leverage (for example, HDF5, OPC, etc.).

• Specifications that describe how CTA components work.

Figure 1.2-1 Energistics domain standards rest on a shared foundation of the Energistics Common Technical Architecture (CTA). This guide provides an overview of the CTA.