A frame-based model for large manufacturing databases

A major requirement of database systems in engineering design and manufacturing applications is support for storage and maintenance of complex objects. Frame based systems are capable of modeling complex objects. However, many of these systems are implemented in main memory. As the number of objects to be stored far exceeds the capacity of the main memory of a computer, such an implementation is often unusable. Therefore, new ways to model and manipulate large manufacturing databases are needed. In this paper we present an implementation of a frame based system on top of the POSTGRES extensible database system. Such an implementation combines the advantages of database management and frame based systems and allows for the development of large manufacturing database applications with minimal effort.