Standard data model

Abstract: Future computer-aided project management (CAPM) software will be greatly improved through the technologies of project modeling—the rich, general-purpose representation of the project in the computer—and system integration—the sharing of computer models among applications Our approach is to achieve system integration by establishing standard models that all applications can adopt and share This requires a standard data model that specifies the general data-representation approach, a standard domain model that provides a schema or language for representing construction information, and a project model or database for information about a specific project that can be shared among multiple computer applications This paper reviews these standard models and then describes our prototype integrated system called the object model–based project information system, or OPIS OPIS uses a shared object–oriented database as the central unifying core of an integrated project planning system that includes an interface to an intelligent CADD program, a plan-generation expert system, an estimating application, and a scheduling application OPIS demonstrates the feasibility and power of using standard object-oriented project models to achieve CAPM system integration

Abstract: Although many temporal extensions of the relational data model have been proposed, there is no comparable amount of work in the context of object-oriented data models. Moreover, extensions to the relational model have been proposed in the framework of SQL standards, whereas no attempts have been made to extend the standard for objectoriented databases, defined by ODMG. This paper presents T_ODMG, a temporal extension of the ODMG-93 standard data model. The main contributions of this work are, thus, the formalization of the ODMG standard data model and its extension with time. Another contribution of this work is the investigation, on a formal basis, of the main issues arising from the introduction of time in an object-oriented model.

Abstract: Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), the buildingSMART open standard for BIM, is underused with respect to its promising potential, since, according to the experience of practitioners and researchers working with BIM, issues in the standard’s implementation and use prevent its effective use. Nevertheless, a systematic investigation of these issues has never been carried out, and there is thus insufficient evidence for tackling the problems. The GeoBIM benchmark project is aimed at finding such evidence by involving external volunteers, reporting on various aspects of the behavior of tools (geometry, semantics, georeferencing, functionalities), analyzed and described in this article. Interestingly, different IFC software programs with the same standardized data sets yield inconsistent results, with few detectable common patterns, and significant issues are found in their support of the standard, probably due to the very high complexity of the standard data model. A companion article (Part II) describes the results of the benchmark related to CityGML, the counterpart of IFC within geoinformation.