CERC Technical Report Series

Technical Memoranda

CERC-TM-93-007

MODEL-BASED INFORMATION ACCESS

V. Jagannathan

R. Karinthi

M. Sobolewski

G. Almasi

April 1993

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: This effort has been sponsored by Defense Advance Research Projects

Agency (DARPA), under contract No. MDA972-88-C-0047 for DARPA Initiative in Concurrent

Engineering (DICE).

Concurrent Engineering Research Center

West Virginia University

Drawer 2000, Morgantown WV 26505

* Appeared in the Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure

for Collaborative Enterprises, IEEE Computer Press, April 1993, pp 198-212.

Abstract

The engineering data of a large enterprise is typically distributed over a wide area and archived in a variety of databases and file systems. Access to such information is crucial to a team member, particularly in a concurrent engineering setting. However, this is not easy, because (1) a model of the relevant information is not available, and (2) there is no simple way to access the information without being knowledgeable about various computer data formats, file systems, and networks. We have developed a system called the Information Sharing System (ISS) to enable access to diverse and distributed information within a corporation. Such data could be stored in different repositories such as databases and file systems including those that contain multiple media. Our paper describes the methodology of the ISS, the details of the implementation and extensions planned for the future.