MANAGING THE INTEGRITY OF DESIGN-DATA GENERATED BY MULTIPLE APPLICATIONS - THE PRINCIPLE OF PATCHING

The purpose of this work is to develop automatic methods of semantic i ntegrity maintenance, in support of concurrent engineering. Semantic i ntegrity relations in any final engineering design are built up increm entally, through the use of different computer applications. Here, the structure of these integrity relations are formalised for representat ion within a database. When changes to a design have to be made, they can invalidate integrity relations in other parts of the design. Forma l methods are defined for identifying what data and integrity relation s are invalidated by any change. Methods for making changes that minim ise re-design are described and formalised. Opportunities for using se mantic integrity to assess progress on a design are reviewed.