Engineering data management: achieving integration through database technology

Abstract

This article presents an architecture for engineering data management that incorporates current work on engineering product standards as well as current work in database research. In particular, a framework that views an engineering design environment as an integrated, heterogeneous database system is presented. This integrated view of data makes use of data exchange standards in PDES/STER presenting a framework for the representation of meta data that describes an objectoriented view of data and supports an object-oriented query language for the retrieval of data from multiple data sources. How the use of active database technology supports a rulebased approach to constraint propagation and change notification is also described.