CERC Technical Report Series Technical Memoranda

CERC-TR-TM-92-019
An Information Sharing System based on an EXPRESS Model George Almasi
Vasile Montan
Shiye Qiu
Evan Shmidt
George Trapp
October 1992

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: This effort has been sponsored by Defence Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), under contract No. MDA-972- 91-J-1022 for DARPA Initative in Concurrent Engineerign (DICE).

Concurrent Engineering Research Center
West Virginia University
Drawer 2000, Morgantown WV 26505

An Information Sharing System BasedAn Information Sharing System Based on an EXPRESS Modelon an EXPRESS Model

George Almasi
Vasile Montan
Shiye Qiu
Evan Schmidt
George Trapp

CERC
West Virginia University Morgantown, WV 26506

An Information Sharing System Based on an EXPRESS Model

ABSTRACT
One of the key ingredients needed to enable cooperation among a product development team is a tool that encourages, permits and facilitates information exchange. A product development team relies not only on newly created information but also depends on existing historical information. The information required can be incomplete and fragmented, it can come in a variety of formats, and it can be widely distributed. The data management systems may use different nomenclature or query languages. Many of these problems can be overcome by providing a unifying (master) model of all of the information that the product development team may require. At CERC, a system, called the information sharing system (ISS), is under development. The ISS is based on an EXPRESS meta-schema. The ISS integrates heterogeneous, multi-functional, and distributed databases. The ISS uses a client server interface to allow for viewing, browsing and navigating of the master model, and the information being modeled. The ISS accommodates existing enterprise repositories. The ISS end users (product development team members) are shielded from the locations, organizations, and access methods of the various information repositories. The ISS currently is being tested in simple application environment. This environment is based on an extension of the ?Coffee Cup? Application Protocol being developed for the STEP community. Some specific features of the ISS as applied in the test environment are the following: inclusion of a multi-media repository; EXPRESS master model navigation and translation including simple LOCAL WHEREs; and retrieval of heterogeneous legacy data.