The Research view is mainly organized according to abstractions of software behaviors and the resources that are manipulated by those behaviors, which aligns with MITRE's research into vulnerability theory. In addition to classification, the Research view explicitly models the inter-dependencies between weaknesses, which have not been a formal part of past classification efforts. The main examples are chains and composites.
The view uses multiple deep hierarchies as its organization structure, with more levels of abstraction than other classification schemes. Ideally, the abstraction is only on weakness-to-weakness relationships, with minimal overlap and no categories. Thus, weaknesses would be present from the lowest levels all the way to roots of the tree. Each member weakness would cover a single error. The top-level entries of each of the hierarchies are called Pillars.
This approach lays the groundwork for a more solid understanding of the complexity of weaknesses and their impact. Once the foundation is established, the Research view can then be used to systematically identify theoretical gaps within CWE. We can then start adding in lower-level variations to create a more complex and thorough understanding of weaknesses.
The organizational structure of the Developer View (CWE-699) is not appropriate for the goals being used in the Research View (CWE-1000). In CWE-699, weaknesses belong to multiple categories, the relevance of which can change based on the context in which the weakness occurs, or the perspective of the viewer. As a result, weaknesses are often children of categories that have little to do with the nature of the underlying software error.