Data integration framework based on a generic product model

To facilitate efficient data integration and reuse, we have been developing a technology knowledge infrastructure (TKI) that is useful for managing plant product lifecycle data. TKI has been built based on a data integration framework so that it can manage huge volumes of complex data in an integrated plant data warehouse (PDWH) systems and connect between legacy systems and WWW based thin client applications. TKI was verified and demonstrated with actual project data used in the design and construction of nuclear power plants. In the PDWH systems, a new data integration network model, called a generic product model (GPM), was used for data representation. To integrate data represented by GPM, we propose and develop GPM-XML for explicit description of plant data classification and instantiation. With this unified data representation, the system can provide integrated images of 2D, 3D views and attributes in a very short time via Intranet/Internet using browsers. To reuse data via PDWH systems with legacy systems, a bi-directional translation system with a mapping tool has also been proposed. With this tool, the mapping tasks become easier and the mapped results can be reused as externalized useful knowledge for the mapping between legacy systems and GPM-based PDWH systems.