Data managment for engineering applications

• Authors: Hans-Peter Steiert
• Venue: Data Management in a Connected World
• Year: 2005

Current database technology has proven to fulfill the requirements of business applications, i.e., processing a high number of short transactions on more or less simple-structured data. Unfortunately, the requirements of engineering applications are quite different. A car’s bill of material, for example, is a deep tree with many branches at every level. Data objects become even more complex if we consider the engineered design objects themselves, as for example a gear box with its parts and how they are related to each other. Supporting complex data objects has many implications for the underlying data management system. It needs to be reflected at nearly any layer, from the API down to the storage system. Besides complex objects, the way design objects are processed in engineering applications differs from business applications. Because engineering is an explorative task, the concept of short transactions does not fit here. Working with design objects is a task of days, which leads to a different programming model for engineering applications. In addition, the data management system needs to support versioning of objects and configuration management. Furthermore, engineering is done in a collaborative team. Hence, sharing of design objects in a team is necessary while, at the same time, their collaborative work has to be synchronized. All those special requirements have to be considered in data management systems for engineering applications. In this contribution, the special requirements, as sketched above, are characterized. Also the approaches developed to cope with these requirements will be described.