After the initial release of STEP (ISO 10303) in 1995/96 LKSoft was searching for the right programming language to implement this standard. STEP was considered to be the basis for a complete new line of software products. Consequently, choosing the right programming language from the very beginning was essential. Major requirements were that the programming language should be object oriented so that it could easily follow Express (ISO 10303-11) and that it should be inherently save. These requirements could not be fulfilled by the popular languages at this time such as C, C++ and Pascal.
A main issue for choosing the right object-oriented programming language was support of the multiple inheritance capability of Express. Nevertheless, LKSoft first investigated the experimental language Oberon because of its solid basis as a successor of Pascal and Modula connected with the assumption that it would later be possible to extend Oberon for multiple inheritance. But after a few months of work this development was stopped because Java got very popular, offering a good solution for the multiple inheritance problem via the interface concept.
So in late 1996 a team consisting of Lothar Klein, Gintaras Palubeckis and Raimundas Raciunas defined the basic concepts on how to support Express defined data in Java. After a year of development a first basic prototype was running. Then the team made the decision to go beyond an ordinary Application Programming Interface for Express defined data models. A higher-level concept of how to manage application data was needed and the new Standard Data Access Interface, SDAI (ISO 10303-22) seemed to be exactly the right concept. It took one more year to finish and release JSDAI v1.0 in 1998 together with the Java programming language binding to the SDAI (ISO 10303-27).
Over the years JSDAI got more and more improved and extended. Under Vaidas Nargelas and other new team members the integration of JSDAI with relational databases and with XML was turned into perfection.
Since the first release in 1998 till today the basic concepts of JSDAI have not changed and there are no plans on changing them because they have prooved to be very useful and efficient. Applications developed in 1998 using v1.0 are still running in 2009 using v4.2.
Development of ISO 10303 (STEP) standard
- 1994/95 STEP initial release (IS state for parts 1, 11, 21, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 101, 201, 203)
- 1997-09-10, FDIS version of SDAI (ISO 10303-22)
- 1998-05-29, Working draft of Java binding to the SDAI, ISO 10303-27
- 1999-02-14, Committee draft of ISO/CD 10303-27
- 2000, Final publication of ISO/TS 10303-27