CAEX (Computer Aided Engineering Exchange) is a neutral data format that allows storage of hierarchical object information, e.g. the hierarchical architecture of a plant. On a certain abstraction level, a plant consists of modules or components that are interconnected. CAEX allows storage of those modules or components by means of objects. Object oriented concepts such as encapsulation, classes, class libraries, instances, instance hierarchies, inheritance, relations, attributes and interfaces are explicitly supported. CAEX bases on

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

and is defined as an

XML schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constra ...

(xsd file). The original intention of developing CAEX was to remedy industry's lack of a common and established data exchange between process engineering tools and process control engineering tools. However, CAEX can be applied to all types of static object information, e.g. plant topologies, document topologies, product topologies, petri nets. It can also be used for non-technical applications like phylogenetic trees.

Technical features

CAEX combines model-techniques with meta-model-techniques. The model-techniques allow storage of object information that is common across different vendors, e.g. objects, attributes, interfaces, hierarchies, references, libraries and classes. The meta-model-techniques allow a flexible definition of object information that is usually individual and application dependent, e.g. certain attribute names, specific classes or object catalogues. CAEX is mainly a static data format and not designed for storage of dynamic information. However, it is possible to define special classes for the description of dynamic behaviour.

History

CAEX development started in 2002 as a university project at

RWTH Aachen RWTH Aachen University (), also known as North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Technical University of Aachen, University of Aachen, or ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hoch ...

at the chair of process control engineering (Prof. U. Epple) with the industrial support of

ABB ABB Ltd. is a Swedish- Swiss multinational corporation headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. The company was formed in 1988 when Sweden's Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA) and Switzerland's Brown, Boveri & Cie merged to crea ...

corporate research Ladenburg. In 2003, the first CAEX proposal was submitted to the German standardization committee DKE K941 (TC65, WG12). In 2004, CAEX was published as part of the DIN V 44366. After a positive international vote, CAEX was published as part of the

IEC The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...

PAS 62424 in May 2005. In 2007, the next IEC standardization step was passed, and it was published as IEC 62424 CDV (Committee Draft for Voting). On 12 August 2008, the final version of IEC 62424 (Ed. 1.0) was published.

Status

CAEX is currently available as CAEX Version 3 (Version 3).

Partners

- CAEX was developed within the DKE K 941 together with major industrial partners of the process industry; Bayer,

BASF BASF SE () is a German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters is located in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The BASF Group comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries ...

, Linde, Uhde, Wacker,

Intergraph Intergraph Corporation was an American software development and services company, which now forms part of Hexagon AB. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the w ...

, Innotec,

and the

.
- In the manufacturing automation area, CAEX serves as top level data format for the new neutral data exchange format

AutomationML {{short description, Neutral data format AutomationML (Automation Markup Language) is a neutral data format based on XML for the storage and exchange of plant engineering information, which is provided as an open standard. The goal of AutomationM ...

driven by Daimler, Siemens,

KUKA KUKA is a German manufacturer of industrial robots and systems for factory automation. It has been predominantly owned by the Chinese company Midea Group since 2016. The KUKA Robotics Corporation has 25 subsidiaries, mostly sales and servi ...

, Rockwell and

Applications

CAEX is currently applied in the areas of process engineering, process control engineering, the oil & gas industry, and manufacturing automation engineering. The following research institutes are especially involved in the investigation of CAEX (Status 2007). * RWTH Aachen * HSU Hamburg * TU Dresden * Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing (IITB) * Imperial College London * Johannes Kepler University Linz * AutomationML consortium

References

External links

CAEX web site of the Chair of Process Control Engineering, RWTH Aachen, Germany
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caex Computer file formats Industry-specific XML-based standards