ISO 10303 Application interfaces supported by Genesis environment - The funStep ESPRIT project experience -

Typically, software tools from different software houses are modeled in distinct ways, and offering different Import/Export data formats, therefore enabling data communication among them is an arduous task. One possible approach, to eliminate this problem is the development of dedicated interfaces in order to translate the heterogeneous data formats however this direction drives to a high number of interfaces. An alternative approach can be followed with the use of standards. This way it is possible to avoid the development of a high number of interfaces and extend the lifetime of the whole system. The last direction is defended by ISO, which is responsible for the STEP project (ISO10303) in order to produce a methodology towards the creation of an integration process supported by the definition of a standard for the exchange of product data model. Although, STEP approach seams the best answer, it evolves complex and long processes, which drastically decrease the number of practical implementations so far. Therefore, in the last years, UNINOVA developed the Genesis’ environment, STEP compliant, with the objective of providing a set of generic libraries and mechanisms that speed up the integrator’s tasks, facilitating the generation of interfaces and decreasing development errors, in order to achieve integration results in a competitive time. This paper presents the funStep ESPRIT project, where the integration problem was considered and where the STEP approach was followed, supported by the development environments produced by UNINOVA.