Requirements for an Advanced Database Transaction Model to Support Design for Manufacturing

The ESPRIT-III project TransCoop aims at providing computer support for cooperative tasks. Design for Manufacturing (DfM) is one of the application areas that is being studied within TransCoop. Within the project, we are developing a specification language for describing cooperative tasks, an advanced database transaction model for supporting such tasks and computer support for the specification language and the transaction model. It has been recognised that traditional transaction models are not sufficient for this purpose. This has resulted in a number of higher-level transaction models. Problem is that these models are often rather ad hoc: we are not aware of results that state systematically what is missing from traditional transaction models. In our paper, we provide an analysis of the requirements DfM imposes on such a transaction model and its accompanying specification language. We do this by studying DfM scenarios in three case studies: two from practise and one from literat...