As we see, SGML/XML offers a great potential to establish a glue layer in complex engineering processes. This layer can be used to harmonize different data structures of the engineering tools, to integrate information from many sources and to establish a long term available base of document and data assets. In order to achieve this, a careful DTD design and a well founded implementation strategy is required. There are systems on the market that can support the implementation of database oriented DTDs. But there is still a significant effort remaining to get it to work.
There are public DTDs developed in the MSR consortium which have been designed with this approach in mind and can be used to build a document base. These DTDs can be used in pilot and production projects.
This style of DTDs is possible but not yet in the mainstream focus of SGML/XML which is oriented towards traditional documents. But this situation is going to change.
It is my intention to contribute to this process and to encourage others to using the potential provided by SGML/XML.