LO-2: Product Data StandardsLecturer: Ricardo Gonalves

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ContentsPD Standards: History and OrganizationsISO organizationStructureTC184/SC4ISO 10303 (STEP)BasicsApplication Protocols and Modular STEPPros and ConsOther Reference Standards

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Standards development and standards settingDeveloped nations and industries created a global, sophisticated, consensus-based process that was very successful in building needed standards.

Stakeholders recognized need for global (vice national/regional) implementation and created Organizations (SSO) for that purpose:ISO International Organization for StandardizationITU International Telecommunication UnionIEC International Electrotechnical Commission* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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Brief Overview of Recent HistoryEarly 1980s century-long process of rapid evolution in standards setting culminated in an orderly, hierarchical, global infrastructure that became a mature and respected industry in its own right.Broad and deep infrastructureCovering all types of manufacturing, telecommunications, and technologyUp to then, it served industry and society well -- but it then failed to adequately accommodate the first wave of IT-based innovation and creativityLate 1980s Revolutionary changes such as consortia being used as a new type of standards development organization (SDO).1990s Convergence of IT, Communications and industry sectorsFragmentation of standardizationToday Infrastructure continues to serve traditional industry well, but is being abandoned by some who want new IT standards.Generates global fragmentation in standards settingSome consortia became indistinguishable from traditional de jure SDO/SSO (e.g., IETF, W3C, OASIS, OMG)* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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Standards UniverseUNIndustry AssociationsProfessional SocietiesGovernmentConsortia

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Organization ExamplesVoluntary vs. Involuntary standardsVoluntary: consumer choosesInvoluntary: government regulation/lawTreaty vs. non-treaty organizationsTreaty: e.g., UN, ITU, G7, NAFTANon-Treaty: e.g., ISO, IEC, IEEEStandards setting organizationsAccredited: e.g., ISO, IEC, BSI, DIN, CSA, JIS, ANSI, IEEE, UL, NFPA, SAE, ASTM, INCITS, CENSpecification development organizationsNon-accredited: e.g., IETF (internet), W3C, OMG, ATM Forum, Open Group, OASIS, IRDA, DAVIC, consortia* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

ISO OrganizationInternational Organization for Standardization(www.iso.org)

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ISO BackgroundThe "International Organization for Standardization" would have different abbreviations in different languages ("IOS" in English, "OIN" in French for Organisation internationale de normalisation), it was decided at the outset to use a word derived from the Greek isos, meaning "equal". Therefore, whatever the country, whatever the language, the short form of the organization's name is always ISO.

International standardization began in the electrotechnical field: the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) was established in 1906. Pioneering work in other fields was carried out by the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA), which was set up in 1926. The emphasis within ISA was laid heavily on mechanical engineering. ISA's activities came to an end in 1942.

In 1946, delegates from 25 countries met in London and decided to create a new international organization, of which the object would be "to facilitate the international coordination and unification of industrial standards". The new organization, ISO, officially began operations on 23 February 1947. * Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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ISO Structure* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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National Member Bodies (107)* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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Corresponding Members (47)* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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ISO StructureTC184/SC4* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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Technical Management BoardTo report to and, when relevant, advise Council on all matters concerning the organization, coordination, strategic planning, and programming of the technical work of ISO.

To examine proposals for new fields of ISO technical activity, and to decide on all matters concerning the establishment and dissolution of technical committees.

On behalf of ISO, to keep the ISO/IEC Directives for the technical work under review, to examine and coordinate all proposals for amendments and to approve appropriate revisions.

To establish (and dissolve) Technical Advisory Groups (TAG) in order to obtain expert advice, and to appoint their members and chairmen.

To appoint registration authorities and maintenance agencies for the implementation of International Standards.

To establish (and dissolve) committees on general standardization principles and to appoint their chairmen.

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STEP, ISO 10303ISO/TC 184: Industrial data systems and integration* Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)Mission:Develop and promulgate standards for the representation of scientific, technical and industrial data.

Develop methods for assessing conformance to these standards, and to provide technical support to other organizations seeking to deploy such standards in industry.

Provide implementable specifications, in the form of international standards that will support the requirements for product model data and enable electronic commerce among the virtual, collaborative enterprises of the 21st century.

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What is Industrial Data?Long life span 30 to 50 years

Related to large, complex products, needing configuration management

Must have component libraries for Different views such as geometry and metadata Different forms of lists - explicit, algorithm, class

Need a simple model of data warehousing * Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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Industrial Data Exchange / SharingIndustry requires complete, accurate and timely data exchange and use Between all the participants in a value chain Throughout the entire life cycle Across all business functions

The exchange/sharing of the data must use: Consistent models Common vocabulary Consistent reference data Information quality * Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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TC184/SC4 GoalsCreation and maintenance of standards that enable the capture of information comprising a computerized product model in a neutral form without loss of completeness and integrity throughout the lifecycle of the product

Specific objectives include:flexibility to permit expansion without invalidating existing portions of the standard; efficiency for processing, communication, and storage; rigorous and unambiguous documentation; the minimum possible set of data elements; separation of data content from physical format, that is a clear separation between format and instances; a logical classification of data elements; compatibility with other existing relevant standards; implementability; testability. * Courtesy of ISO TC184-SC4Jerry Smith and Chris Kreiler (DoD, USA)

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TC184/SC4 Families of Standards

ISO 10303 (STEP)Standard for the Exchange of Product data

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What is STEP ISO 10303?[ISO 10303 is an International Standard for the computer-interpretable representation of product information and for the exchange of product data. The objective is to provide a neutral mechanism capable of describing products throughout their life cycle. This mechanism is suitable not only for neutral file exchange, but also as a basis for implementing and sharing product databases, and as a basis for archiving.]* *from ISO 10303-1International Standard computer-interpretable representation product information exchange of product data. neutral mechanism products throughout their life cyclebasis for implementing and sharing product databasesbasis for archivingISO 10303, also known as STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product data) is a multi-part open-standard for the computer-interpretable representation of product information and for the exchange of product data under the manufacturing domain.

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STEP Family of Standards

The structure of this International Standard is described in ISO 10303-1. The numbering of the parts of the International Standard reflects its structure:

Part 1, Overview and fundamental principles

Parts [11..20]: Description methods,Part 11, Description methods: The EXPRESS language reference manual

Parts [21..30]: Implementation methods,Part 21, Implementation methods: Clear text encoding of the exchange structure;Part 25, Implementation methods: EXPRESS to OMG XMI binding;Part 28, Implementation methods: XML representations of EXPRESS schemas and data;

Parts [31..40]: Conformance testing methodology and framework,Parts [41..100]: Integrated generic resources,Part 41, Integrated generic resource: Fundamentals of product description and supportPart 42, Integrated generic resource: Geometric and topological representationPart 45, Integrated generic resource: Materials

Parts [101..200]: Integrated application resources,Parts [200..300]: Application protocols,Part 210, Application protocol: Electronic assembly, interconnect, and packaging design Part 214, Application protocol: Core data for automotive mechanical design processes Part 236, Application protocol: Furniture product data and project data

Parts [301..500]: Abstract test suites,Part 325, Abstract test suite: Building elements using explicit shape representation

Parts [501..1000]: Application interpreted constructs,Part 515, Application interpreted construct: Constructive solid geometryParts [>1001]: Application modules.Part 1103, Application module: Product class;Part 1104, Application module: Specified product;

Definitions universal to all STEP standardsStandardized languages/methodologies for the representation of STEP informationFormalized bindings of STEP information to other standardsMethodologies and procedures to test software-product conformance to STEP standardsGeneric STEP data models. These can be considered building blocks of STEP and are shareable among different Application ProtocolsTop level of the STEP hierarchy. Are the industrial standards, and describe specific product informationTests of data and criteria that are used to asses conformance of softwareRe-usable groups of semantic and functional information. Application Protocols include several of these to describe their data model

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Modelling in STEP: The Triangle example

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STEP Technologies

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Application Protocol (AP)STEP Application protocols (APs) are information models that capture the semantics of an industrial requirement and provide standardized structures within which data values can be understood by a computer implementation.

An AP defines neutral file formats (ISO 10303 Part 21 and Part 28) which can support all the product data required by the application. The neutral file formats can be used for exchange between CAD, CAE and PDM (Product Data Management) systems, and for the long term archiving of product data.

Also defines a reference data model that allows to describe context specific industrial information along the full PLC:conceptual view of that information (ARM Application Reference Model)implementable specification (AIM Application Interpreted Model)

Data model is described both textually and graphically using the EXPRESS (ISO 10303 Part 11) modeling language.

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InterpretationAP - Implementable Specification

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AP Structure|| AM Structure

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Application Module (in EXPRESS)

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Application Module (in Graphical EXPRESS)

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STEP StrengthsContains more than forty APs focused on Product Data Modeling

Large body of standardized, rigourously defined (by industry people) technical concepts

Based on public data models, open architecture and sharable data, allowing companies to effectively exchange and share product information

Supports design reuse and provide access to data across all stages of PLM

Can integrate all Product Data providing a single standard Product Data Storage.

STEP modeling language (EXPRESS - ISO 10303-11) is very powerful.Provide capabilities to embed bussiness rules in data models

Recent studies proved that the use STEP could generate savings of about $1 bilion per year in the US automotive, aerospace, and ship building industries (PDES, Inc)

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STEP WeaknessesTraditionally exchanged using ISO 10303-21(Part 21)However recently XML structure (Part 28) was also introduced

Part 21 is an ASCII character based syntax, which lacks extensibility and is hard for humans to read.Interpretable only by systems using STEP

STEP modeling language (EXPRESS) is complex and unfamiliar to most application developers

Lack of low-cost supportCharacteristic essential for reduced budget organizations

Other Reference Standards

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Other Reference StandardsOther communities are also developing work regarding the development of standards, methodologies, recommendations and frameworks to deal with product data:OMG,W3C,OASIS,OAG,Etc.

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OMG moves forward in establishing CORBA as the "Middleware that's Everywhere" through itsworldwide standard specifications: CORBA/IIOP, Object Services, Internet Facilities and Domain Interface specifications.

Established in 1989, OMG's mission is to promote the theory and practice of object technology for the development of distributed computing systems. The goal is to provide a common architectural framework for object oriented applications based on widely available interface specifications. OMG is headquartered in Framingham, MA, USA and has international marketing offices in the UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, and India. Additionally, OMG sponsors the Object World series of Trade Shows and Conferences.Object Management GroupOMGReferences: UML and XMIMDA

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The W3C was founded in 1994 to develop common protocols for the evolution of the World Wide Web. We are an international industry consortium, jointly hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT/LCS] in the United States; the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique [INRIA] in Europe; and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Asia. Initially, the W3C was established in collaboration with CERN, where the Web originated, with support from DARPA and the European Commission.

We're vendor neutral, working with the global community to produce specifications and reference software that is made freelyavailable throughout the world. W3CReferences:XML,XSDHTMLXSL

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OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,500 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.OASIS is distinguished by its transparent governance and operating procedures. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. Completed work is ratified by open ballot. Governance is accountable and unrestricted. Officers of both the OASIS Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Board are chosen by democratic election to serve two-year terms. Consortium leadership is based on individual merit and is not tied to financial contribution, corporate standing, or special appointment.OASISOrganization for The Advancement of Structured Information Standards References: ebXML,UDDI

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The Open Applications Group is a non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and process based XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration. It is the largest publisher of XML based content for business software interoperability in the world. Open Applications Group, Inc. members have over 5 years of extensive experience in building this industry consensus based framework for business software application interoperability and have developed a repeatable process for quickly developing high quality business content and XML representations of that content. The OAG, a major publisher of XML-based content for business software interoperability, has published over 170 BODs. BODs focus on content, not technology; this content is the business object or process model for interoperability. OAGOpen Applications GroupReferences: BODs

Learning Object 2: Product Data Standards.We will begin this learning object with a brief history of product data standards and organizations, with special focus on one of the most representative organizations, the International Organization for Standardization.

You will learn about the Standard for the Exchange of Product data, most commonly known as STEP.

At the end of this learning object, you will have a brief overview on other reference standards and the organizations that maintain them.The world of standardization had its origins when stakeholders from developed nations recognized the need for global implementation and created a global, sophisticated, consensus-based Standard Setting Organizations such as:

. ISO, the International Organization for Standardization.. ITU, the International Telecommunication Union.. Or IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission.In the early eighties a century-long process of rapid evolution in standards setting culminated in an orderly, hierarchical, global infrastructure that became a mature and respected industry in its own right.

However, in the late eighties things started to change when new consortia appeared as new type of standards development organization, leading to the fragmentation of standardization in the nineties.

Nowadays, the Standard Setting Organizations infrastructure continues to serve traditional industry well, but is being abandoned by some who want new IT standards from the newer consortia that are currently indistinguishable from traditional de jure.

We can look at standardization organizations as planets that are part of the universe.They are divided different categories:. the Standard Setting Organizations, such as ISO, IEC, United Nations or ITU; . Professional Societies like the IEEE; . Industry Associations as the Open Applications Group;. Governmental;. Or most recently consortia like the W3C and OMG.Here is a summary of the diversity of standards and organizations that define them.

There can be voluntary and involuntary standards, where the consumer chooses or is imposed to adopt the standard. The organizations can still be classified as treaty or no-treaty, and as standards setting or specification development organizations.Now lets look a little deeper in one of the most important standardization bodies: the ISO Organization.In 1946, delegates from 25 countries met in London and decided to create a new international organization, of which the object would be "to facilitate the international coordination and unification of industrial standards". The new organization, ISO, officially began operations on 23 February 1947.ISO as a relatively complex structure, headed by a general assembly.Nowadays, 107 National Member Bodies have seat and voting capacity on the general assembly. These are the countries that can approve or reject a standard.The least developed countries are not left aside and can be corresponding members, providing suggestions to the general assembly.Currently ISO has 47 corresponding members.

ISO also contains a technical management board under which are several technical committees. These are responsible for developing the standards.An example that we will analyze further ahead is the technical committee 184.

The Technical Management Board among many things is also responsible for:. examining proposals for new fields of ISO technical activity, and to decide on all matters concerning the establishment and dissolution of technical committees;. reviewing the technical work;. And appointing registration authorities and maintenance agencies for the implementation of International Standards.

The technical committee 184 is named Industrial data systems and integration.Its mission is to: . Develop and promulgate standards for the representation of scientific, technical and industrial data. . Develop methods for assessing conformance to these standards, and to provide technical support to other organizations seeking to deploy such standards in industry. . And to provide implementable specifications that support the requirements for product model data and enable electronic commerce.

Like its parent entity, ISO, also TC184 has a complex structure with several sub-committees responsible for complementary areas under the industrial data domain.During this course, we will focus only on sub-committee four and one of its standards. The Standard for the Exchange of Product data, most commonly known as STEP.But what is really industrial data and why is it so important that requires so much attention from ISO?

It has a long life span that can go up to fifty years.It is related to large, complex products, needing configuration management.

These characteristics make it very hard to represent and maintain

Besides, industry requires complete, accurate and timely data exchange and use between all the participants in a value chain, throughout the entire life cycle, and across all business functions.This is exactly one of the goals of SC4.

Creation and maintenance of standards that enable the capture of information comprising a computerized product model in a neutral form without loss of completeness and integrity throughout the lifecycle of the product.

SC4 has so far defined quite a lot of standards, among which we can highlight some.

All the standards in the table are actually families of standards.

STEP is by far the one most known and that has the biggest number of sub-standards enclosed.P-Lib, stands for Parts Library and normalizes a way of representing parts of products in a catalog.MANDATE, OIL & GAS, PSL, IIDEAS and OTD are other examples of strongly industry supported standards.

Lets now focus on STEP, the Standard for the Exchange of Product data. ISO 10303 is an International Standard for the computer-interpretable representation of product information and for the exchange of product data. The objective is to provide a neutral mechanism capable of describing products throughout their life cycle. This mechanism is suitable not only for neutral file exchange, but also as a basis for implementing and sharing product databases, and as a basis for archiving. As mentioned before, STEP is a big family of standards, as is divided by parts that are also standards.During the example we will get deeper in these concepts, and we will check how this organized structure will support the development of any new industrial standards, called Application Protocols, with a few effort. (Well, in fact to achieve an IS status is a 6 to 10 years project, but otherwise it should be unapproachable )

The structure of this International Standard is described in ISO 10303-1. The numbering of the parts of the International Standard reflects its structure:

Part 1, Overview and fundamental principles Here it is described all the STEP structure

Parts [11..20]: Description methods, Where the modeling language, both textual and graphical, are detailed. Also the interchange formats and bindings to other languages are here specified.

Parts [21..30]: Implementation methods, All kind of supported implementation methods: ( Plain ASCII, XMI, XSD, )

Parts [31..40]: Conformance testing methodology and framework, Requirements on testing, and abstracts test methods for the implementation methods.

Parts [41..100]: Integrated generic resources, Basis of common semantics for all the Application Protocols.

Parts [101..200]: Integrated application resources, Sets and subsets of the Integrated generic resources.

Parts [200..300]: Application protocols, Any Application Protocol provides the data model and the basis for developing industrial implementations. As for an example, the Scope of AP214 is the Automotive sector; AP215 scope are ships and AP236 is furniture.

Parts [301..500]: Abstract test suites, Part 325 is the Abstract test suite for the building of elements using explicit shape representation

Parts [501..1000]: Application interpreted constructs.

Parts [>1001]: Application modules. The most important thing in STEP. Based in the Integrated Generic Resources (Parts 41-100) and keeping their semantics, the data has been divided in conformance with the functionality in such way that for the creation of any new Application Protocol or the updating of an existing one, the work done could be re-used. The most common tasks that a regular STEP user will need to do, is to be able to understand a model and interpret STEP data.Lets go through a very simple example to realize how these task can be performed.

Imagine that you are implementing a system that manages geometrical information modeled in STEP. If we take a simple 2D triangle as an example, what are the properties that differentiate the triangle in the picture, from any other? Lets see how you could pinpoint these properties in EXPRESS, the STEP part 11 and modelling language.

It is only possible to design shapes if we have points. This way, simplest concept that the EXPRESS model should have is the notion of point.

In EXPRESS, concepts are defined using the reserved word ENTITY followed by the name of the concept. The SUBTYPE word indicates that Point inherits attributes from another entity, in this case it inherits from the concept Object the attribute label, that is meant to name any object. Looking at the picture, you can see that it contains 3 points named P01, P02, and P03. By this point you probably have realized that EXPRESS attributes are represented inside the ENTITY indicating previously the name and after its type. To the Point concept, this model also defines an integer value for the X and another for the Y, thus positioning the point in a 2D plan.

As you can see, the notion of plan is also modelled, and is defined by an identifier and an unrestricted number of geometric shapes, that in this very simple example can only be either Lines or triangles. This way, both Lines and Triangles are specific cases of geometric shapes, so they inherit the attributes from the parent concept. If you look closely, you will notice that this is were the EXPRESS language starts to become a little different from other modelling language.EXPRESS allows to redefine both types and names of the parent concept, allows to assign default values to attributes, and to specify instantiation rules.

Looking at the ENTITY Line, you can see that the attribute elements from the parent concept geometric shape is renamed to edges, and its type is restricted to become a set of 2 Points. Also, the attribute ofType is assigned the default value aLine.

Besides all this, EXPRESS still allows to use functional properties of any programming language. In this example, we have defined a function to calculate the distance between two points, and we have used it to define an instantiation rule stating that the 2 points that define a Line, cannot be coincident.

Now, for the real data:The information that instantiates the model and really defines the figure also must follow a particular format. The traditional STEP format is Part 21 and looks like this.Each piece of information it must have assigned an identifier number followed by the name of the concept instantiated which in brackets has the information regarding the attribute values.

Nowadays, STEP also works using XML technology and predicts the transformation of EXPRESS models to XML Schemas using the binding described in its Part 28. This integration of formats is meant to enlarge STEP range on industry, and captivate more organizations to implementing the Application Protocols.

STEP Application protocols (APs) are defined in the Parts 200, and are information models that capture the semantics of an industrial requirement and provide standardized structures within which data values can be understood by a computer implementation

The data model of an Application Protocol is described both textually and graphically using the EXPRESS modeling language. It describes a neutral file format that can be used for exchange between CAD, CAE and PDM systems, and for the long term archiving of product data.

The reference model defined by an Application protocol follows a modular structure that promotes reusability between other APs. This modular approach may seem complex but actually allows to speed up the development time, and also enables an easier integration between APs.

An AP typically is subdivided in smaller models named Application models which encapsulate the information of parts of system. For example the part that allows to represent the information of a person or organization is modelled in the Person or Organization module. These modules can reuse concepts available to the whole STEP community that are Independent of Implementation Contexts and can themselves be reused and grouped in implementable views.

The implementable views provide levels of functionality to Application Protocols, since an organization may not be implementing the full model, but just a view of it. This way, that organization could say that is compatible with a particular CC of the AP.Just to refresh ideas and not to be confused about what an Application Protocols or Application Models are, they are not just models.The models are just part of bigger documents that contain all the information required to understand the model and the scope where it is meant for. The models are only described under sections four and five of the standard document, Information requirements and Module interpreted Model.This is a vision of an application model. The one we are looking at is the Product class module that is meant to group products in classes and assign them specifications. This module is quite useful for product catalogue information.This is a vision of Product_class in the graphical notation EXPRESS-G. This notation is quite helpful for a faster comprehension of the modules. Wrapping up, STEP is a very powerful set of standards with more than forty APs focused on Product Data Modeling.It Supports design reuse and provide access to data across all stages of PLM and is based on public data models, open architecture and sharable data, allowing companies to effectively exchange and share product information.Recent studies from PDES inc proved that the use STEP could generate savings of about 1 billion dollars per year in the US automotive, aerospace, and ship building industries.

However it is not perfect, otherwise it would be far more spread that it actually is.

Some of the reasons why STEP is not so successful as it could be are:1 - It is traditionally exchanged using Part 21 which is a ASCII based format lacking extensibility and hard for humans to read. This makes Part 21 just interpretable by STEP systems.2 - The STEP modeling language (EXPRESS) is complex and unfamiliar to most application developers.

However, the above characteristics could not be a problem if STEP did not lack low cost support. Tools and consultancy are most of the times too expensive for smaller budget companies, like the SMEs, to bear. For these reasons, these kind of companies currently prefer other reference standards.Other communities are also developing work regarding the development of standards, methodologies, recommendations and frameworks to deal with product data. The most known examples are the OMG and the W3C communities.The OMG already developed references like the Unified Modeling Language, and its interchange format, the XMI, or the Model-driven Architectures. The Word Wide Web Consortium, most commonly known as W3C, developed the XML,XSD and HTML that crucial for the functioning of the internet.OASIS is an organization more oriented to the promotions of e-business and service oriented architectures. This way, they developed ebXML and the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration repository of web-services.And to finish the enumeration of a list that is very long, it is also worth mentioning an industry group that focuses on the development of best practices and process based XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration. The Open Applications Group.