ABSTRACT

The requirement for a formal EXPRESS mapping language in STEP has long been recognized. A number of mapping languages have been developed which allow users to specify how EXPRESS defined data will be transferred between one application and another.

This paper presents an overview of one of these languages, named EXPRESS-X. EXPRESS-X is expected to evolve into an official EXPRESS mapping language, and an SC4 stage 0 project has begun to develop a first draft language reference manual for it. This paper provides a broad overview of EXPRESS-X, covering its features and its use of conformance classes to specialize the language for certain mapping tasks. The paper also discusses the requirements for EXPRESS mapping languages.