Version management and conflict detection across heterogeneous engineering data models

Automation systems engineering projects depend on contributions from several engineering disciplines. These contributions consist of complex artifacts like mechanical, electrical, and software components and plans, which get updated concurrently. While there are version management features in the software tools for each individual engineering discipline, there is very little work on version management across semantically heterogeneous data models in engineering tools and projects. In this paper, we introduce the Engineering Database (EDB) concept, which provides foundations for version management and update conflict detection in engineering data models across tool boundaries. We evaluate the concept based on a real-world use case for signal engineering at a hydro power plant systems integrator. Major result is that the parsing of proprietary engineering tool data exports can be generalized and the mappings between engineering tools can be simplified.