UniSTEP Toolbox
In the demand of the global market, organizations have been searching for flexible integrated environments to better manage their services and product life cycle, where their software applications could be easily integrated independently of the platform in use. However, with so many different modelling and implementation standards being used, interoperability problems arise when the chosen product model is described using one particular technology (e.g. EXPRESS) and is required to be integrated with systems that use totally different technologies with different degrees of expressiveness.
This way, it would be an added value (especially for software developers) if the original model could be described in more than one language/technology depending of the environment where it is being used. UniSTEP is a toolbox that gathers different model transformation tools able to parse STEP models represented in the EXPRESS language, and apply to them model morphisms capable of modifying the original model. It the case of UniSTEP toolbox the modifications implemented by the different tools are only at the representation language level.
Due to the STEP architecture, the toolbox is able to process modular standards, i.e. larger scope standards that are composed by other smaller standards by normatively referencing multiple EXPRESS file. Whenever the destination language enables, the toolbox transports this property into the output model.
UniSTEP and its constituting tools rely on a framework that applies the OMG MDA principles, handling of information at different meta-levels for integration purposes. At that level, the effort to define valid transformation morphisms from the EXPRESS modelling language to others is heavily reduced since there is more information available about both the operand model languages (input and output). Hence, for the UniSTEP framework development, an EXPRESS metamodel as been defined specifying all the possible variations that a STEP data model can have. In figure below, is possible to see how the UniSTEP framework is built, i.e. using the metamodel as basis to write the different morphisms for the several outputs desired.
UniSTEP tool box, besides the transformations features described in the next sections, allows the opening, saving and the edition of EXPRESS models and XML (including XSD, Schematron, XMI) files. The tool has syntax highlighting capabilities to ease file edition, and allows also syntax validation. Moreover, it provides a graphical way of navigating through the EXPRESS concepts (e.g. entities, types, rules, etc.) and an EXPRESS-G graphical viewer to produce simple diagrams that could ease the interpretation and analysis of the models. These functionalities are very much appreciated by system analysts to facilitate their work in the standards interpretation process.
The UniSTEP Toolbox is composed of the following services:
Download Link:
UniSTEP Toolbox (16.2 Mb)
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