Engineering Databases

This book discusses the maturity of today's database technology in the light of the needs of engineering applications and industrial automation. Those at the forefront of database research come up with new techniques to satisfy new needs, but today's engineering community must live with database systems that reflect the older state of the art. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate that even though solutions based on today's technology are less than perfect, they do provide solutions to current pressing problems. The book mainly covers current database technology and its applications, but also mentions some promising techniques under research in order to prepare the reader for the future. The book contains four chapters that cover the significance of engineering databases, the current state of database technology, the utilization of engineering databases, and two extensive case studies. For cursory reading, the chapters may be considered to be self-contained. Intended readers are middle management and engineers from industry who deal with automation both as users and vendors, consultants to such industry, vendors of database systems, and lecturers and students. The book requires no special background in informatics.