Integrated system for developing intelligent electronic standards book with Internet capability

Abstract

This paper describes an integrated system for developing an intelligent, electronic standards book with Internet capability. The developed electronic standards book contains computer-aided design (CAD) drawings with hyperlinks to descriptive text, material management data, and procedures for safety, operating, and installation. A unique aspect is the set of hyperlinks to an expert system shell that aids field workers as the company moves to a process-oriented environment. The developed electronic standards book resides on the corporate server and appears as a well-linked web site. The book also resides on CD-ROM for field crews and has the same web site appearance as the corporate version. The CD-ROM version receives update information from the server. The full Internet capability and a seamless switch between those two web sites, based on a comprehensive logic, is provided by our developed Standards Book Viewer which integrates the standard web browser MSIE 4.0. The integrated system is developed within a mixed language programming environment of Microsoft Visual++, Java, and HTML. The digitalization of the standards books is performed using an interactive approach.