A META-MODEL AND SEMANTIC MAPPING METHODOLOGY FOR HARDWARE DESIGN-DATA MANAGEMENT

Database technology for storing, retrieving, and maintaining models of hardware components is necessitated by the ever-increasing complexity of designs and the design environment. This paper focuses on data rep resentation and sharing for hardware designs specified using different standard description languages. The research offers two basic contrib utions: ( I) a meta-model for organizing related information models is instantiated for electrical CAD modeling (ECAD), with an information model for VHDL as an example, and (2) a methodology for developing sem antic mappings between information models is proposed and illustrated. The information models and mappings provide a conceptual schema for d atabase implementation and a basis for automated sharing of informatio n through interfaces defined for heterogeneous data formats. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.