Development of object-oriented multimedia database and its application to retrieval of maintenance parts

Abstract In this paper is presented a method of maintenance part information retrieval, applied to a multimedia database of elevator parts.In design and maintenance sections, there are needs to treat multimedia data suchas images and graphs, used for non-procedural operations, as CAD and office automation systems become disseminated. We developed a prototype system for retrieval of maintenance part information, applied to a multimedia database of elevator parts, to beused for ordering the needed information for maintenance. Conventionally, these neededpart information are searched and ordered by a maintenance engineer with cumbersome process. Namely, the engineer must select appropriate parts according both to the specifications of the elevator to be maintained, and to the description in documents foreach maintenance part.In our system, the elevator parts, which have complex hierarchical structure, are modelled by object-oriented technology. Thus, a maintenance engineer can easily retrieve and order the needed part information, guided by the computer system, utilizing