Exchanging STEP data through XML-based mediators

Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) provides a systematic approach for user communities to model and exchange data on specific types of products and manufacturing technologies. With,the increasing popularity of the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) on the Internet, mapping STEP data into XML seems a logical way to make STEP data more accessible through the Internet. On the other hand, Internet-based information systems generally consist of data sources and clients that access the data sources: and mediators have been proposed as a middle layer that provides added value by converting the basic data into information required by the clients. To work effectively, mediators require machine-readable data models and standardized interfaces, which can be developed based on XML. In this paper we discuss the ways of automated conversion from STEP into XML, and the exchange of STEP data through the XML-based mediator architecture.