Course Abstract:

     Design Environment such as intelligent CAD/CAM systems and CASE tools deal with the creation, evaluation, and validation of products (represented by stored as data). These systems are knowledge intensive, and their processes rely on interaction, iteration, versioning, and cooperation between related tasks.
     Traditional database systems have focussed on the capture, preservation, and query of large quantities of uniform data. They use general purpose standard data models. Their processes rely on efficient optimization of the storage and query methods and are focussed on the preservation of data through the strict isolation of simultaneous processes.
     Recent research efforts in database have centered around understanding and meeting the database needs of advanced applications such as CAD/CAM, CASE, and other design environments. This course surveys the issues raised by these applications, and the latest research addressing them.

1. Requirements for Design Environments:
    Definition of design, design environments, examples
    Needs in terms of data modeling
    Needs in terms of domain knowledge modeling
    Needs in terms of transaction processing

2. Database Models for Design Environments:
    Object Oriented database model
    Active database systems
    Active Object Oriented Model
    Integrating domain semantics with the object model

3. Semantic Relationships in Design environments:
    Subclassing, subsetting, subsumption
    Containment
    Composition
    Aggregation

4. Transaction Processing:
    Propagation of changes within the same class
    Propagation of changes along the containment hierarchy
    Propagation of changes along the composition hierarchy
    Cooperation and coordination's structure

5. Domain Evolution:
    Classification of object constraints (essential vs. incidental)
    Process of domain evolution (validity, validation)
    Versioning and domain evolution

   Fatma Mili is an Associate Professor at Oakland University, Michigan, USA. She obtained a Doctorate degree in Computer Science from the University of Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France) in 1984. She has been at Oakland ever since with visiting positions in Canada, Tunisia, and France. Her research interests are in database for scientific applications, formal methods, and software engineering. The course proposed here describes some of the research done by her Doctoral students and funded by automotive industry for their CAD/CAM systems.