Integration infrastructure [DtoP project]

The design to product (DtoP) architecture is built around a central store of product information. The effective operation of DtoP requires that the information it contains is always up to date and accurate. Consequently it is vital that the maintenance of this central store is carefully managed and controlled. The information is accessed by a collection of software tools chosen to suit an application and mediated by a tool manager that overseas the communication between tools and between tools and the information store. The number and complexity of the software tools is variable and can be changed to meet the changing application requirements, as a system and its supported products grow. Only the tool manager and its associated infrastructure tools remain invariant in different systems. The paper deals with this invariant set of tools