John Zachman, Father of Enterprise Architecture often says “The Framework is The Enterprise Architecture”.

Zachman Framework is an Ontology of Single variable models described from Six Stakeholder Perspectives from Executive to Operations. Each Perspective is described by Six variables - Inventory, Action, Location, Role, Timing and Motivation. Each cell in the Framework describes a single variable model. Solutions to meet various Stakeholder requirements are created by combining appropriate variable models. A Project or a Problem situation can be mapped to a small sub set of cells to provide required Solution. Since the Framework contains the models of systems and strategies from Concept to Operation of the whole of the Enterprise, it is in effect the “Enterprise Architecture”.