Affiliations: Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute,
National Research Council Canada, London, Ontario, N6G 4X8, Canada | Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6G 1H1, Canada
Abstract: This paper proposes an open data management facility called
Collaboration Oriented Data Agent (CODA) for computer supported collaborative
work in design community. CODA provides a proactive service for engineering
data management, supporting data consistency, concurrent access,
multidisciplinary teamwork, and engineering workflow. It is equipped with a
number of advanced technologies and several important behavioral and functional
features. This paper is concerned with combining agent based technologies with
project oriented data management to develop CODA based framework. The design
and implementation issues have been identified and addressed in terms of agent
paradigm to facilitate engineering data management. This framework has been
incorporated into a prototype of a multidisciplinary design optimization
environment.
Keywords: Agents, data management, collaborative design, distributed design, CSCW
