Existing interfaces to nowadays database systems show to be increasingly unsuitable for the evolving wide spectrum of engineering applications (e.g. CAD/CAM, geographic information management, knowledge-based systems for planning and design, etc.). This is further intensified due to the workstation-oriented processing scheme prevailing in the engineering area. Starting with an architectural approach tailored to this distributed processing concept, we propose the PRIMA-NDBS and its most important interfaces, i.e. the data model and the application/user interface offering effective support of engineering information systems