RM-ODP defines the semantics of fundamental concepts and constructs of information management used for specification of any system (computer-based or otherwise) independently of a specific methodology, technology, or tool(set). In this manner, all stakeholders of an information management project could use the same explicitly defined system of concepts, thus providing for traceability between and maintainability of business, IT system, and technology specifications.

Definitions in RM-ODP are based on the concepts of abstraction (defined as suppression of irrelevant detail) and precision. The Foundations of RM-ODP (Part 2) are very short — only 18 pages. Every concept there is precisely defined in clearly structured English within the context of other precisely defined concepts. The Foundations of RM-ODP define such concepts as a system, a viewpoint, a class, a type, a component, a composition, an action, an activity, a contract, an invariant, and so on, as well as the relationships between these concepts.

There is nothing radically new in RM-ODP. The need to elucidate the definitions of things, actions, and especially the structure (relationships) of a system in order to understand that system has been noted by many authors, both in modern-day information management and systems thinking (such as Gerald Weinberg), and much earlier (such as Walter Bagehot, for example). The concepts essential to understand and specify the semantics of system components and structure have been formulated and discussed in IT, mathematics, philosophy (for example, by Mario Bunge and by Friedrich August von Hayek), and system analysis for a while.

Open Distributed Processing (ODP) combines the concepts of open systems and distributed computing.