Supporting standard data model mappings

Very little work has been done on specifying a standard mapping between the overlapping semantic specifications in the standardized data models used in architecture, engineering and construction (A/E/C, e.g., IAI-IFC and ISO-STEP standards). However, several companies have developed bespoke mappings from these standards into their design tools, and back out again. With this approach it is difficult to understand how complete their mappings are, and what assumptions are made in the development of the mappings. Yet for semantic mappings, as distinct from mappings over geometric representations, this has a profound implication for the correctness of the resultant data. In this paper the development of a suite of mapping support tools is discussed to illustrate the level of support required to ensure semantically correct mappings across data models. the space of mappings specified. Such a tool can also determine what has, or has not, been mapped between. • Automated mapping support to enable a significant proportion of the mappings required between two schemas to be automatically determined. • A mapping interpreter to allow evolving mappings to be tested on partial sets of data. • A verifier to check the correctness of the developing mapping specification. Such a verifier would offer support from basic syntactic checking across the data models through to a more comprehensive semantic analysis of the proposed mapping. The development of such a support environment is described in the following sections. With this environment in place it is then possible to move on to providing standard mappings between the major standard schemas which exist in our domain.