A software factory for air traffic data

Modem information systems require a flexible, scalable, and upgradeable infrastructure that allows communication, and subsequently collaboration, between heterogeneous information processing and computing environments. Heterogeneous systems often use different data representations for the same data items, limiting collaboration and increasing the cost and complexity of system integration. Although this problem is conceptually straightforward, the process of data conversion is error prone, often dramatically underestimated, and surprisingly complex. The complexity is often the result of the non-standard data representations that are used by computing systems in the aviation domain. This paper describes work that is being done to address this challenge. A prototype software factory for air traffic data is being built and evaluated. The software factory provides the capability to create data and interface models for use in the air traffic domain. The model will allow the user to specify entities such as data items, scaling, units, headers and footers, representation, and coding. The factory automatically creates a machine usable data representation. A prototype for a Domain Specific Language to assist in this task is being developed. This paper describes the scope of the work and the overall approach.