theEXPRESSway 3 - 2/1997

This is hot and big news: The US Department of Defence (DoD) initiated MariSTEP project has chosen EPM Technology's EXPRESS Data Manager for data modelling and technical data integration in the US shipbuilding industry.

Cap Gemini, Europe's largest IT consulting company, is experiencing increased demand for competence in the field of STEP and Express among their clients.

As a result of the POSC/Caesar project for the standardisation of the sharing and exchange of data, the Norwegian oil companies Saga Petroleum, Statoil and Norsk Hydro have started a «Take-up» implementation project called "VÅV". The VÅV project name relates to the multi-billion NOK oil & gas fields called Varg, Åsgard and Visund.

While STEP/Express is taking on industry at full strength, EPM Technology is exercising a strong influence by developing and promoting the standard. But research institutes also play an important part in promoting STEP based technology. And an increasing number is starting to use EPM's tools and methods in their research projects.

The Data Warehouse concept has achieved full acceptance as means for efficient storage, organisation and reuse of common data. Accordingly most professions have successfully started using Data Warehouse solutions and thereby achieved large returns on investment.

The Norwegian Map Authority currently holds the secretariat for the evolving ISO/TC211: Geographic Information/Geomatics standard, in which the research institute SINTEF plays an important part. The objective is to make an international standard for the exchange of GIS data in a manner which allows electronic maps/map data to be transferred between different GIS applications and hardware platforms, as well as to be integrated with other functional systems.

EPM had prominent guests from Japan last February when Japan STEP Promotion Center's (JSTEP) senior researchers Mr. Seishiro Takeuchi and Mr. Kazuo Ohkoshi were attending a meeting in Oslo with EPM company representatives. Different Japanese NCALS projects were presented, pinpointing JSTEP's hard work on AP's with typically AP212 for plant applications being very useful. JSTEP now uses EPM's Express-tools.

Version 3.0 Update: The large number of new and enhanced features in version 3.0 have a focus on the EDMexpress-G and EDMmodelConverter applications. The Compiler is updated with respect to the multi-schema method (Building-Blocks) and direct output to your Web brow-ser for error reports, which reduces time and cost in most projects.