A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

How to create self-contained PLM persistent storage?

How to create self-contained PLM persistent storage?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
24 April, 2009 | 2 min for reading

I’m getting back to the topic of persistent storage of PLM data. In my previous posts, I touched on this a few times.

PLM Persistent Content and Dynamic 3D PDF

PLM Dream Technologies for 2009

First of all, I will try to define functional scope for product persistent storage: In my view, there are five groups of product information that need to be included in this storage: (1) product geometry and models; (2) drawings; (3) knowledge representation (how-to; reasoning; math…); (4) Technical data such as suppliers, manufacturing, etc. and finally (5) meta-data describing all the product data together.

While I see a growing interest and demand for a solution that could possibly covering all the five topics I mentioned above, I don’t see technologies mature enough to provide an answer and allow practical implementation of such a solution in the field. I will try to cover briefly what I found available and what I see practically possible today.

I see STEP as a very solid and mature format that probably can consolidate geometry, model, and sometime additional product information. At the same time, raster formats (IGES, TIFF) and some others can be used to represent drawings for the long-term. Broad usage of PDF makes this format a reliable and stable option for long-term persistent storage as well. On top of PDF, I’ve seen some development such as PDF/A (for document archiving). Even if this format cannot be used as is for product-related data, this is the direction that can be taken to develop extensions for PDF that can support needs for representation of additional technical data.

I didn’t find any reliable technologies that can be used to store meta-data and technical data, rather than existing database and XML technologies. Even if these (Database and XML) technologies prove themselves for transactional usages, I haven’t found practical reference on using databases for data storage over a long time..

Apart from the above-mentioned technologies, I didn’t find mature technologies that can be used. There are a few research projects that I found in this space – LOTAR and some developments done by OMG, OASIS, and W3C. All these development are mostly research in character and contain research and development of models for persistent storage. At the same time, I don’t see them ready for production deployment.

So far, storage has become less expensive and we continue to produce a massive amount of new data on a daily basis. I see persistent storage as a very interesting opportunity for development that we’ll be able to see in the near future.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
28 May, 2010

I had chance to read a very interesting blog by Fracois Guillaumin related to SOA and PLM. He writes about roots...

23 January, 2009

The issue of information overload is growing in importance. People are getting more and more information via different sources –...

4 June, 2015

I attended startup event yesterday in MIT. It was organized by by Startup Secrets with participation of Michael Skok and Alex Osterwalder....

29 September, 2019

Agile software development was a popular thing for the last 20 years.  If you lived under the to rock check...

6 March, 2023

I’m continuing to digest my 3DXW23 experience and what I learned. Design, engineering, and manufacturing are undergoing a radical transformation....

31 August, 2009

I want to talk today about PLM and consumers. One of the very important sides of Product Lifecycle Management is...

25 June, 2022

Earlier this week, I attended Autodesk Forge Data Day in Boston. I could not miss the event with such a...

8 February, 2011

Two weeks ago, during SolidWorks World 2011, I had a chance to talk with Jonathan Scott of Razorleaf about different...

19 January, 2016

Enterprise software is easy. Take any relevant world from a jargon of your company, add word “management” and voilà –...

Blogroll

To the top