Alexander Ball

An approach to accessing product data across system and software revisions

Long-term users of engineering product data are hampered by the ephemeral nature of CAD file formats and the applications that work with them. STEP, the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data (ISO 10303), promises to help with meeting this challenge, but is not without problems of its own. We present a complementary solution based on the use of lightweight file formats to preserve specific aspects of the product data, in conjunction with a registry of relevant representation information as defined by the Open Archival Information System Reference Model (ISO 14721). This registry is used to identify suitable destination file formats for different purposes, and provides a resource to aid in the recovery of information from these formats in the future.

A grand challenge: immortal information and through-life knowledge management (KIM)

‘Immortal information and through-life knowledge management: strategies and tools for the emerging product-service business paradigm’, is a Grand Challenge project involving eleven different UK universities and incorporating substantial industry collaboration. It is investigating a range of issues associated with the move towards a product-service paradigm in the engineering sector, in particular the long-term curation of digital data, learning from production and use, and appropriate governance and management techniques.

Annotation of lightweight formats for long-term product representations

Companies operating in todays global economy are increasingly expected to manage the entire lifecycle of their products, and are finding advantage in a distributed, collaborative working style. However, existing three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) systems are not well adapted to this way of working. This paper highlights some limitations in the current applications, and presents a framework for overcoming them based on three strands of current research: lightweight representations, the annotation of CAD models, and representation information as defined by the Open Archival Information System Reference Model (ISO 14721:2003). In the proposed framework, a ‘stand-off’ method is used to layer information, in the form of annotations, on top of both CAD models and lightweight representations alike. These annotations can be circulated independently of the geometry, facilitating more flexible information flow across the whole product lifecycle. The approach is demonstrated with an industrial case study.

Lightweight product lifecycle information management for small enterprises

In an increasingly competitive and global market, small enterprises can benefit just as much from product lifecycle management (PLM) as larger enterprises. However, the software currently available to support PLM is aimed at larger enterprises and does not entirely suit the more flexible business processes and heterogeneous systems environment of smaller enterprises. We argue that some of the most important benefits of PLM may be achieved by small enterprises using the combination of a full-featured CAD system with lightweight visualisation formats and a system of overlaid annotations that may be applied to a model regardless of its format. We outline a proof-of-concept implementation of these ideas and indicate where further work is needed.

The Fifth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPRES 2008)

The Fifth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects was held at the British Library on September 29–30, 2008, with the theme “Joined Up and Working: Tools and Methods for Digital Preservation”. Topics ranged from the technical foundations of digital preservation through preservation system architectures to the organizational and policy issues facing the custodians of digital resources. There were also sessions dedicated to dealing with particular types of content, training needs, and methods for auditing needs and services.

Missing Links: The Enduring Web

The Web runs at risk. Our generation has witnessed a revolution in human communications on a trajectory similar to that of the origins of the written word and language itself. Early Web pages have an historical importance comparable with prehistoric cave paintings or proto-historic pressed clay ciphers. They are just as fragile. The ease of creation, editing and revising gives content a flexible immediacy: ensuring that sources are up to date and, with appropriate concern for interoperability, content can be folded seamlessly into any number of presentation layers. How can we carve a legacy from such complexity and volatility?

Dataset-Level Metrics:Knowledge Exchange, DCC, CASRAI

The drive towards accepting datasets as valid scholarly outputs, worthy of recognition and reward, has met with concerns about how to gauge the degree of their worth. With skilled peer reviewers for datasets few and far between, there has been considerable focus on the use of quantitative metrics to help assess data quality and impact. This presentation looks at work performed in this area by the European forum Knowledge Exchange, the UK Digital Curation Centre, and the international standards body CASRAI.

Report from the PV 2007 Conference, DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, October 9–11, 2007

This is a report from the conference PV 2007, held at the German Remote Sensing Data Centre, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, on October 9–11, 2007. The PV conference is held every two years, and is concerned with the preservation of scientific and technical data, and the activity of adding value to the data to ensure it can be widely used and re-used. The theme for 2007 was ‘the Challenge of Heterogeneity’, not only in the data being supported but in the tools used to access and process the data, and in the uses to which the data may be put.