Databases Modeling of Engineering Information

Abstract

Information systems have become the nerve center of current computer-based engineering applications, which hereby put the requirements on engineering information modeling. Databases are designed to support data storage, processing, and retrieval activities related to data management, and database systems are the key to implementing engineering information modeling. It should be noted that, however, the current mainstream databases are mainly used for business applications. Some new engineering requirements challenge today’s database technologies and promote their evolvement. Database modeling can be classified into two levels: conceptual data modeling and logical database modeling. In this chapter, we try to identify the requirements for engineering information modeling and then investigate the satisfactions of current database models to these requirements at two levels: conceptual data models and logical database models. In addition, the relationships among the conceptual data models and the logical database models for engineering information modeling are presented in the chapter viewed from database conceptual design.