DATABASE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SUPPORTING ENGINEERING DESIGN HISTORIES

An engineering design history is a step-by-step account of the events and the states through which a design artifact evolved. Database techn ology has not yet provided adequate mechanisms for capturing and reusi ng design history information. This paper presents an infrastructure f or computer-aided archiving and interrogation of engineering design hi stories. This framework combines research from software engineering, d ata engineering, and knowledge engineering to develop an environment f or the capture and reuse of design histories. A Design Process Represe ntation Language (DRL), is combined with 'enhanced' STEP models to cap ture design steps and design parameters. This high-level representatio n is translated into Data Definition Language (DDL) for operations on an object-oriented database. Advances in database technology that are required to fully support intelligent design history systems are discu ssed. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd