Structural EXPRESS Editor

摘要

EXPRESS is the official information modeling language of the next generation ofproduct information standards, commonly referred to as STEP or Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data. This paper presents a Structural EXPRESS Editor (SEXE), which has two parts: an Interactive Editor, and a Translation Module. The Interactive Editor was built using a tool called the Data Probe Editor (DPE) Builder and is an interactive, friendly editor with which a user defines the structure of an EXPRESS schema. The output of the Interactive Editor is a STEP exchange file that is translated into EXPRESS by the Translation Module, a software system written in LISP. The paper describes the DPE Builder and both parts of SEXE. The editor is assessed and EXPRESS editors, generally, are discussed. Alternative representations of EXPRESS are presented. A few issues in information modeling highlighted in the course of building the editor are discussed.