On Architecting and Implementing a Product Information Sharing Service

Abstract

Recent developments in information technology are influencing the field of engineering informatics in some profound ways. Nowhere is the influence more evident than in the use of Internet-based technologies and standards to share engineering and business information across a worldwide enterprise. In turn, the business need for collaboration among various players and partners in a globally integrated enterprise is driving the development and deployment of open standards, service-oriented architecture, and middleware. The convergence of these developments has provided us an opportunity to architect and implement a product information sharing service described in this paper. The architecture is service oriented and is based on the Object Management Group's PLM Services 1.0 specifications. It is implemented using IBM’s WebSphere Process Server middleware and PROSTEP’s OpenPDM software. This product information sharing service is one of the first industrial examples of a successful application of service-oriented architecture to product lifecycle management.