Building an Integrated Large Scale Step Database for Virtual Enterprises
Abstract The rapid expansion of high performance computer networks such as the Internet allows companies to come together electronically to exploit emerging market conditions and produce new products. Such a group of companies has been called a virtual enterprise (VE). One barrier to VE collaboration is the lack of interoperability among the application systems of different companies — product data produced by the systems at one company cannot be read by the systems at another. STEP is a state-of-the-art technology for product data exchange and provides a basis for VE data sharing. In this paper, some challenges and difficulties of building an integrated large-scale database of STEP data are discussed. A prototype database was designed and implemented to test our solutions. Preliminary results show that the database is scalable and able to integrate STEP data. We believe the solutions are a basis for building a practical STEP database that can be used to support VE collaboration.