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S-TEN Project Overview

S-TENS-TEN Project: Intelligent Self-describing Technical and Environmental Networks

S-TEN is a research project, which was executed from April 2006 to October 2008. This project was co-funded by the European Community's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and involved 8 partners from 5 European countries.

Read more about the S-TEN project here.

This website presents the results of Workpackage 3 of this project - Linking with Design and Maintenance Knowledge, in particular, the SematicSTEP.

SemanticSTEP

SemanticSTEP is a name of a set of ontologies and derived Express schemas, which define the mapping between ISO 10303 (STEP) models and ontologies in the OWL/RDF world.

ISO 10303 (Industrial automation systems and integration - Product data representation and exchange), also called STEP, is an international standard, which defines models to store and exchange product data. The SemanticSTEP technologies enable the mapping of these models into Ontologies using RDF and OWL.

SemanticSTEP is not a brand new idea on how to do data modeling, it is simply the result of a careful selection and arrangement of modeling and implementation strategies, which have been already developed and implemented in various places; similarly as the Java programming language, which did not introduced a single new concept that had not been known before.

From STEP to OWL/RDF

ISO 10303 data models are defined using the Express modeling language. The main advantage of using Express in comparison to today's OWL/RDF is that complex constraints can be defined. These constraints are the ones which make data exchange between different systems possible.

Since the initial release in 1994/95, the core data models of ISO 10303 have been widely extended, however all changes have been done in a way to keep a strict upward compatibility. Such stability is essential for an international standard yet it has a side effect - early decisions cannot be replaced by improved solutions afterwards. As a result, several important features of the standard are required for the compatibility but are no longer optimal for the enhanced capabilities of STEP. This caused the team in S-TEN Workpackage 3 to decide against a syntactic mapping between ISO 10303 and OWL/RDF. The new goal was to preserve all the core concepts of STEP while avoiding the limits of the particular modeling strategy chosen in 1984 and before.

The mapping of STEP data models to "equivalent" ontologies for the OWL/RDF world is performed as a two-step process:

  • First, STEP data models are converted into a form that is much better suited for OWL/RDF purposes and is not hindered by the historical limitations of STEP. This is achieved by constructing a set of new Express defined data models, which take advantage of the specific capabilities of OWL/RDF and eliminate the identified historical barriers of ISO 10303.
  • Afterwards these derived Express models are converted into OWL/RDF using an automatic syntactic conversion process.

The resulting ontologies do not contain all the constraints formulated in Express. This means that the full validation of OWL/RDF application data can only be performed using Express technology. This requires bi-directional converters for application data between the derived Express models and resulting OWL/RDF.

Supported data models

SemanticSTEP supports the core data models, defined by ISO 10303 (STEP) standard, which covers a great amount of different concepts. The following parts are supported:

  • Hierarchical assembly structure
  • Breakdown structure
  • Product specification
  • Chemical compounds and how they are composed from chemical elements
  • Electrical connectivity
  • Layer stack of Printed Circuit Boards
  • Individual pr
  • Activities and Tasks
  • Basis Management information such as approval and certification

These concepts are covered by one or more of the following STEP Application Protocols (AP):

  • AP203 - Configuration controlled 3D design (2nd edition, to be published in 2008)
  • AP209 - Composite and metallic structural analysis and related design (upcoming 2nd edition)
  • AP210 - Electronic assembly, interconnect and packaging design (2nd edition 2008/2009)
  • AP214 - Automotive design
  • AP221 - Functional data and their schematic representation for process plant
  • AP236 - Furniture product data and project data
  • AP239 - Product life cycle support

SemanticSTEP data exchange

SemanticSTEP application data is not intended to be exchanged by individual files, as it is the case for STEP files. Instead, application data is expected to be hosted on database servers and accessible on the Internet.

A set of statements making up a valid OWL/RDF document is available under a particular URL. Statements in other documents can refer to these URLs, establishing the concept of named graphs.