July 2010 Highlight
OMG Approves EXPRESS Metamodel
The information modeling language EXPRESS was standardized in 1994 as ISO 10303-11. As of 2005, there were over 300 major information models for manufacturing and construction information that are formally specified in EXPRESS and standardized by ISO. These models are in wide use in the manufacturing industry and are supported by dozens of software tools. To make these models useful to 21st century software engineers, NIST led an industry group in the development of the standard EXPRESS metamodel, which was officially published in final form by
OMG on 14 July 2010. Working with international partners, NIST provided one of the three principal experts who formulated the metamodel --- the Editor for the standard, and the Chair of the "Finalization Task Force" that resolved industry comments and issues. EXPRESS parsers that can produce the standard exchange form for the models are being developed by Eurostep, Jotne, Uninova, and possibly others. Several tools are available so translation of the ISO models can be done automatically, once the formal mappings are specified. We expect that this project will extend the life and utility of the several hundred ISO standard engineering models of the 1990s -- themselves the results of hundreds of man-years of effort by product and process engineering experts.
POC: Ed Barkmeyer, 301-975-3528
Program: Model-Based Enterprise
Category: Programmatic Accomplishment