What is "caex"

CAEX (Computer Aided Engineering Exchange) is a neutral data format that allows storage of hierarchical object information, e.g. the hierarchical architecture of a plant. On a certain abstraction level, a plant consists in modules or components that are interconnected. CAEX allows storage of those modules or components by means of objects. Object oriented concepts as encapsulation, classes, class libraries, instances, instance hierarchies, inheritance, relations, attributes and interfaces are explicitly supported. CAEX bases on XML and is defined as XML schema (xsd file). The original intention of developing CAEX was the industrial lack of a common and established data exchange between process engineering tools and process control engineering tools. However, CAEX can be applied to all types of static object information, e.g. plant topologies, document topologies, product topologies, petri nets, but also for non-technical applications like phylogenetic trees.