Abstract
STandard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP) is a neutral data exchange mechanism that represents product data throughout the life cycle of a product. In recent years, more and more data models are described and stored in STEP format for various databases. For the purpose of integrating the databases, a standard is needed to achieve the concept of a virtual database. ISO TC184/SC4 proposes a standard that can solve the problem of multi-access interfaces. The standard is called Standard Data Access Interface (SDAI). The SDAI is defined in Part 22 of the STEP-series standards. It provides an access standard for application programs to adapt the access interfaces directly by calling the SDAI library. Thus, it can reduce the time in programming and enforce the code reusability as well as software portability. This research describes the SDAI specification and depicts the SDAI role in the software development environment. Primarily, the thesis implements the SDAI on a specific object-oriented database management system (OODBMS), called Webbased Object Oriented-DataBase (WOO-DB). WOO-DB is developed by the Institute for Information Industry (III). This database management system has its own object manipulation language (OML) and object definition language (ODL) that can be used to manipulate and describe the data of the database. The implementation is achieved by mapping the functions and schemata between the SDAI and WOO-DB. Once the data access interface is independent from data storage technologies, the integration of applications can be achieved easily and effectively.