A graphical process data management system

• Main Author: Tong, J.
• Published: Swansea University 1999
• Subjects: 502.85
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.639249

This thesis aims to investigate aspects of data management and program integration in process design. It proposes a new method and model for data storage, manipulation, and representation, on which a new process design environment may be based. Several aspects of process design database systems are examined, including data models, data handling, graphical user interfaces, and application integration. Process design is an increasingly complex activity. Its complexity is compounded by a great amount of data, the variety of applications involved, and data transfer between applications. There is clear evidence that better data management is needed to support the design activity. The main focus of this research is the use of ODBC technology in a graphical process data management system (GPDMS). Since ODBC is employed, GPDMS uses ACCESS as the underlying DBMS. The GPDMS database consists of TABLSs or ACCESS, which are familiar to most software engineers. This approach benefits those who develop applications sharing data with GPDMS. This research also studies the strengths and weaknesses of existing data models for engineering usage. This leads to the Process Object Model (POM), a user-level graphical data model for handling complex process objects. A new application integration method is proposed by using MACROs to build links and exchange data between the GPDMS database and the integrated applications.