Primitive‐Composite Approach for Structural Data Modeling

Abstract

Accurate, efficient data exchange is vital to improving productivity in the architecture‐engineering‐construction industry. Much of the current work in data exchange is focused on the development of data exchange standards. In examining the data models in these standards and other efforts, we have identified a number of problem areas, including overuse of aggregation hierarchies, nonhomogeneous characterization hierarchies, and replacing relationships with subclasses. To support easy exchange of data between engineering computer applications while avoiding the data modeling pitfalls, we have developed the