Patent ID: 7367018

Claim:
A computer apparatus for managing and sharing engineering data for chemical engineering processes and plants, comprising: a digital processor; an editor defining (i) class views and (ii) a composite class view of the defined class views, given one or more software applications of interest and each given software application having a respective data model or data view, for each said given software application, the editor providing a class view of the respective data model; the editor consolidating said class views to form a composite class views, the consolidating of said class views resulting in the creation of said composite class view being an amalgamation and a rationalization of the individual class views, and the class views being retained in a given software application domain terminology for managing and sharing engineering data for chemical engineering processes and plants; and a data server executed by the digital processor and instantiating a multi-tier data model, there being a core conceptual data model having a plurality of routes between attributes in the composite class view and attributes in the core conceptual data model; the class views effectively being one tier of the multi-tier data model, the composite class view effectively being a second tier of the multi-tier data model and the core conceptual data model effectively being a third tier, the multi-tier data model having links between corresponding attributes across tiers, the multi-tier data model providing management and sharing of engineering data of the given software applications with other process and plant engineering applications, and enhancing process engineering and plant operations.