A framework to assist the adoption of ISO10303 Standards in dynamic industrial environments

Abstract

Nowadays, requirements for interoperability between industrial actors that use heterogeneous technologies have increased and become a recognized limitation at interoperability level. Data model normalization is one of the goals that tend to decrease those limitations, nevertheless, the large number of existing data management technologies, have been leading towards the creation of systems that provide communication between seamless entities through the use of abstract levels. This avoids a specific IT-knowledge of technologies used for data model representation. Thus, the increase of interoperability at architecture level, through the use of the referred abstract level, conducts to data sharing in a trusted and efficient way based on a reference model independent of the technology, being flexible for different purposes. This approach can be characterized as a standard data access interface over normalized referenced data models. This paper proposes a framework to be used under the scope of ISO 10303 data models Standards, which allow data access mechanisms to the respective mapped models represented in implementable technologies like XML and Relational Data Bases. This approach leads to the interoperability improvement at architecture level, being a major goal through the integration of different technologies supported by ISO 10303 Standards and establishing new mechanisms for the adoption of normalized data models.