Creating a tool independent system engineering environment

Specialized system engineering tools, although capable at supporting specific tasks or functions, have limited use in most organizations and don't clearly fit into a broader project data architecture. Attempts by either the tool users or developers to integrate applications outside of a bundled tool set have generally been limited to various forms of data import which creates recurring manual administrative effort and related configuration management problems by having data in multiple places. Commonly, a small group of dedicated personnel end up acting as an interface with the system engineering tool set while others continue to do their work in common desktop applications. This paper addresses issues and challenges associated with current methods of integrating systems engineering tools and data. It considers deploying specialized systems engineering tools across a broader engineering audience and proposes an alternative approach using common technologies in an uncommon manner.