A FRAMEWORK FOR DISTRIBUTED PLANNING AND SCHEDULING SYSTEMS

KNOWLEDGE-BASED PLANNING AND SCHEDULING (P&S) ENGINES REQUIRE THE INTEGRATION OF SEPARATE DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DBMS) FACILITIES IN ORDER TO MANAGE AND SHARE LARGE AMOUNTS OF SCHEDULING DATA AND KNOWLEDGE. PLANNING AND SCHEDULING ENGINES USE PARTICULARLY RICH DATA MODELS FOR THE REPRESENTATION OF ARBITRARILY COMPLEX INTERRELATIONSHIPS AND CONSTRAINTS. CONVENTIONAL DBMS TECHNOLOGIES, SUCH AS RELATIONAL AND FLAT-FILE, CAN NOT ADEQUATELY SUPPORT P&S DATA MODELS. IN THIS PROPOSAL, WE SUGGEST THAT OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (OODBMS) TECHNOLOGY IS MORE SUITABLE FOR P&S APPLICATIONS BECAUSE OF THE SEMANTIC RICHNESS OF OODBMS DATA MODELS. THE PHASE I EFFORT WILL FOCUS ON THE ISSUES AND PROBLEMS OF INTEGRATING TWO DIFFERENT EXISTING P&S SYSTEMS WITH A COMMERCIAL OODBMS AND A PUBLIC DOMAIN OODBMS. RESEARCH WILL BE FOCUSED ON REMOVING BARRIERS TO DISTRIBUTED P&S APPLICATION DEPLOYMENT. THE KEY INNOVATIVE FEATURES ARE: (1) AN OBJECT-ORIENTED DATA MODEL THAT IS UNIFORM ACROSS HETEROGENEOUS DEVELOPMENT LANGUAGES (C, LISP AND ADA) AND PROBLEM DOMAINS; (2) ALLOW EXISTING P&S APPLICATIONS TO BE MAINTAINED AND ENHANCED INDEPENDENTLY; (3) EXTEND USEFUL LIFETIME P&S APPLICATIONS BY ENABLING LOW COST INTEGRATION TO NEW TYPES OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SERVICES. ANTICIPATED BENEFITS/POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS - THE PHASE I EFFORT WILL RESULT IN A FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATING PLANNING AND SCHEDULING APPLICATIONS WITH OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS. MARKET SEGMENTS THAT REQUIRE SUCH CAPABILITIES INCLUDE OPERATION SUPPORT, COMMAND AND CONTROL, AND COMPUTER INTEGRATED ENGINEERING SYSTEMS. ALSO, THIS FRAMEWORK IS IDEAL FOR THE INTEGRATION OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, SUCH AS IMAGE PROCESSING AND KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS WITH EXISTING SYSTEMS.