Building A Layered Database for Design Automation

A layered approach is presented for the database of a distributed, interactive design automation system. Levels of abstraction are described from the point of view of the bottom-up designer. The controversy between the relational and network database formats is explored in the central abstraction: an object-oriented layer which attempts to select the advantages of each of these two formats while avoiding their respective disadvantages. This object-oriented approach treats each of many logical views of the database in its own most optimal fashion and then allows the database system to evolve over time.