Introduction into SDAI

The Standard Data Access Interface (SDAI) provides a low-level API for manipulating data defined with the EXPRESS Schema. SDAI works with the following:

Dictionary schema — Defines EXPRESS schemas.
Session — Controls the SDAI environment.
Repository — Stores models and schema instances.
Model — Stores an entity instance according to an appropriate EXPRESS schema.
Schema Instance — Represents one or several models correctly filled according to an appropriate EXPRESS schema.

SDAI provides the following functionality:

Sessions, repositories, models, and schema instance management.
Manipulations with application data (entity instances, aggregates, attributes), including data validation.

Standard Data Access Interface is defined in the ISO 10303-24 standard.

IFC SDK supports the SDAI via a set of functions included in its API. This interface is late-binding and is not object-oriented.

To get access to SDAI functions, include the sdai.h header file located in the Ifc/Include/sdai subfolder of the ODA Software installation folder.

See Also