The SAE Aerospace Information Report AIR5315 – Generic Open Architecture (GOA) defines "a framework to identify interface classes for applying open systems to the design of a specific hardware/software system." [sae] JAUS Service (Interface) Definition Language defines an XML schema for the interface definition of services at the Class 4L, or Application Layer, and Class 3L, or System Services Layer, of the Generic Open Architecture stack (See Figure 1 below). The specification of JAUS services shall be defined according to the JAUS Service (Interface) Definition Language document.

JAUS Document Organization

The layout of this document is as follows. Section 3 lists external references. Section 4 and Section 5 describe the elements of a JAUS Service Definition: description, assumptions, message set, message encoding and protocol behavior. The bulk of the JAUS Service Definition lies in the last two elements, Message Encoding and Behavior. These two elements are described in detail in Section 6 and Section 7. Section 8 describes two service reference relationships that allow for the reuse of existing service definitions. Section 9 contains an example of a JAUS Service Definition. Version control rules for the JSIDL and all Service Definitions are presented in Section 10. Section 11 contains a short note on compliance. Appendix A contains the complete JSIDL.

Almost all figures in the document use UML 2.0 notation [uml].