SmartPlant Foundation can be used as a simple data repository, an integrated data warehouse, and an authoring tool within an integrated enterprise system. When SmartPlant Foundation is used as an authoring tool, it operates differently from other authoring tools, such as Smart P&ID, because it has access to data that is common to other SmartPlant Foundation authoring applications and the data warehouse. For example, SmartPlant Foundation might be configured to author equipment lists, which might be related to folders or suppliers.
After this equipment is published to the data warehouse, it might be useful to have the published data related to the same folders and suppliers. It is possible to configure mapping within the CDW to publish these relationships, without having to actually retrieve and publish the folders and suppliers themselves. This is possible because the folders and suppliers are created in what is referred to as a Common domain as shown in the diagram below.
