1. Historical background

Over the last 50 years, computer technologies – have made meteoric progress, both in terms of hardware and software –. Their application to scientific fields and to the management of information – their recording and access – have profoundly changed the main processes, providing considerable help in improving their performance and efficiency.

The world of engineering has been turned upside down by the availability of increasingly powerful CAD (Computer Aided Design) tools and simulation calculations, at costs that have gradually become accessible to even the smallest companies, until they can now equip almost all of them.

Developments in databases and high-capacity information transmission networks, encouraged by the emergence of Internet technologies in the 1990s, enabled the introduction of applications that accompanied the profound changes...