Supporting Finite Element Analysis with a Relational Database Backend Part II: Database Design and Access

This is Part II of a three articles on using databases for Finite Element Analysis (FEA). It discusses (1) db design, (2) data loading, (3) typical use cases during grid building, (4) typical use cases during simulation (get and put), (5) typical use cases during analysis (also done in Part III) and some performance measures of these cases. It argues that using a database is simpler to implement than custom data schemas, has better performance because it can use data parallelism, and better supports FEA modlularity and tool evolution because database schema evolution, data independence, and self-defining data.