An Integrated Data Environment (IDE) is the end state of the CALS vision. It refers to an environment where all the data generated from the entire lifecycle activities of a product can be shared by anyone that participates in the management. engineering, manufacturing, or support of the product, although the data are geographically distributed and are maintained in heterogeneous platforms. The primary purpose of this paper is to introduce the fundamental concept, architecture, and core implementation technology of an IDE. The secondary purpose is to suggest some strategic directions to the planning staffs in both government and industry. and to suggest some research issues to the researchers in academia. The reference architecture of an IDE being developed by the US DoD and that of NIIIP (National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocol) being developed by a consortium are discussed. Two principal issues of implementing an integrated database, i.e., distributed object computing including CORBA and multi-database system (MDBS) are reviewed. As a conclusion. the author suggests that daring investment in prototyping an IDE by a nationwide consortium is essential to keep up with the advanced countries in CALS implementation.