Keywords: multibody system analysis, data integration, query language, database management system.

Computer-based tools and methods have become important means of design, simulation and manufacturing in the product development process. Today, many companies function as global enterprises where practically all work is distributed and coordinated worldwide. Consequently large amounts of heterogeneous and distributed engineering data are produced. Furthermore, Computer-based analysis activities within different analysis domains normally need to combine, exchange, and share relevant product data to each other. Product development thus requires product information to be communicated between computer-based tools in such a globally distributed and heterogeneous computing environment.

This paper presents how modern database technology can be used to facilitate the integration of product data, specifically information concerning multibody system (MBS) analysis. Through the examples provided, this paper shows how to use multi-database facilities to integrate MBS data between different engineering analysis tools through network; How to access MBS data by using a CORBA-based client-server model. Furthermore, it shows how to use database query language to pose queries to retrieve MBS information that is stored in the embedded database.

The integrated system presented here is built on both commercial and non- commercial software. MECHAMOS is a multibody system analysis tool to perform MBS analysis. I-DEAS, one of the leading CAD systems for mechanical design on the market, is used to build solid models and visualize the MBS results for the multibody system. AMOS II is the database management system used as both embedded database to query and store I-DEAS MBS data and the base to integrate MBS data between I-DEAS and MECHAMOS. The information and the functionality of I-DEAS are accessed through an API called Open I-DEAS, using a CORBA-based client-server model. This provides direct access to the I-DEAS internal data representations.

The AMOS II database management system is a main-memory multi-database management system. It is built upon an object-oriented and extensible data model that is accessed through the AMOSQL query language. AMOS II can further be embedded within other systems, so application can take advantages of database facilities such as a storage manager, data model, query language, etc. The extensible object-oriented data model makes it feasible to handle more complex data structures, as found in e.g. MBS data, which is usually beyond the range of traditional database management systems.

The benefits of this work include:

1. By using multi-database facilities and CORBA, MBS data produced by MBS analysis tools can be directly accessed through network and applied in other engineering analysis tools, such as CAD systems.
2. The integration of the systems is accomplished at the query language level. This means that the two systems are seamlessly integrated and no file transfers are needed.
3. MBS data can be stored entirely without losing information.
4. All MBS data is immediately accessible through the query language. This is much harder to achieve in, for example, the CAD system itself.

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