JSDAI features

This page gives an overview of the main features of the JSDAI toolkit and applications.

Standard conformance

JSDAI conforms to the following international standards:

• ISO 10303-11, EXPRESS
• ISO 10303-14, EXPRESS-X (draft)
• ISO 10303-21, STEP File (all editions and features)
• ISO 10303-22, Standard Data Access Interface SDAI
• ISO 10303-27, Java binding to the SDAI
• ISO 10303-28, STEP XML
• ISO 10303-35, SDAI conformance test

Application Programming Interfaces (API)

JSDAI supports in parallel four different APIs which are tightly related with each other:

• Early binding: For each EXPRESS entity a dedicated Java class and interface with dedicated access methods for each entity attribute is available.
• SDAI dictionary: An API on meta level to query schema/data model information at runtime.
• Late binding: Generic Java classes for every kind of EXPRESS entity and methods to access attribute values.
• ARM-AIM mapping: Operations to switch between ARM and AIM data models (STEP specific).

In addition JSDAI is able to execute expressions, functions and procedures defined in Express schemas and perform validation on instance data against all the local and global rules defined in Express.

Data storage and exchange

STEP application data can be stored and exchanged in a various of ways:

• STEP File, ISO 10303-21
• STEP XML, ISO 10303-28
• SDAI File
• Local repositories
• Multi-user remote repositories via JSDAI Database

Data handling and transaction control

As a fully conformant application JSDAI takes full advantage of the SDAI concepts to organize and control application data with essential extensions:

• Separation of physical (SdaiRepository) and logical grouping (Schema Instance) of application instances.
• Workspace concept (SchemaInstance + SdaiModel) to control access rights and logical grouping of data.
• Direct support of distributed data between several repositories for reuse in several workspaces.
• Explicit support of AP-Interoperability (between different schemas) by using EXPRESS short forms.
• Full transaction support controled by commit and abort operations.
• For multi-user support SDAI transactions are mapped to DB transactions.

Express Compiler

The JSDAI Express Compiler makes any valid EXPRESS schema (ISO 10303-11) available for the JSDAI Runtime:

• Parses EXPRESS and reports syntax errors;
• Generates Java classes, interfaces and dictionary data for JSDAI Runtime;
• Supports expressions used in procedures, functions, derived attributes and where rules;
• Direct support of the original EXPRESS short forms (USE/REFERENCE FROM). No need to rely on the derived long forms;
• Used to build the JSDAI Library;
• ExpressDoc tool to generate HTML documentation for one or several related Express schemas.

JSDAI Library

Includes practically all relevant Express schemas from STEP and PLIB standards.

• Includes more than 100 EXPRESS schemas;
• AIM schemas are based on EXPRESS short forms;
• Includes ARM and extended ARM schemas for direct implementation;
• HTML documentation with index accross all AIM types.

Supported platforms

As true Java toolkit and applications, JSDAI is able to run on any Java platform supporting:

• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.4.
• older versions of JSDAI are available for JRE 1.2 and 1.3.
• Java 3D for JSDAI 3D viewer.

SdaiEdit and SdaiTerm

Low level tools to edit, and debug application data:

• SdaiTerm running in a terminal mode.
• SdaiEdit, a GUI enabled editor to view and manipulate data.