17 Nov 2017

Avitech published an article about SWIM in this year's ATTI magazine

Addressing the needs of both SWIM data providers and consumers through a “local” SWIM deployment.

Information is the essential commodity for any ATM stakeholder and its timely provision over interoperable means is key to the success of any enterprise. This is becoming even more important with the ever-increasing demand for air traffic, while trying to reduce aviation’s environmental footprint. The singular means of meeting this demand is if all information is managed on a system-wide basis and made available to the relevant ATM stakeholders at the right time.

The challenge is that the required data, which can make a huge difference in the improvement of ATM operations, is often locked within different organizations in systems which provide only proprietary interfaces.

How can SWIM solve all interoperability issues?

With SWIM in place, applications can almost seamlessly connect to different standard services and mix the data they receive and possibly extract new information. The usage of open technology standards makes it possible to reuse available software, simplifies integration and considerably reduces the overall cost. Finally, the loose coupling between different components supports their independent evolution by making the barriers between them practically disappear.

What is “local” SWIM?

In a “standard” SWIM deployment, the system architecture consists of at least three layers: a persistence layer where all the data is stored, a middleware which follows the SOA principles and offers services to the clients (producers/consumers) in the layer above.

With the help of an advanced SWIM middleware solution, like the Aeronautical Exchange Layer (AxL) from Avitech, organizations can implement a cost-efficient, reliable and flexible solution which allows quicker deployment and lets the experts focus on their specific tasks, rather than avoidable communication details. The advantages of the proposed solution are numerous: the same architecture can be used to supply local data consumers with data from 3rd party systems but also host the services and data provided by the own organization; it is advantageous for both consumers and producers of information; it removes the need to research standards and properly implement the required technical interfaces; changes to external technical interfaces need to be addressed only in the middleware and remain completely transparent to internal clients.

Apart from that, deploying a “local” SWIM solution  limits the number of messages which need to be exchanged and provides a single access point to all 3rd party systems. This allows multiple new systems to connect to the local middleware, eases evolution of the systems, helps with backwards compatibility, removes the need for multiple implementations of the same interfaces and at the same time helps solve the problems of both producers and consumers of information in a data centric environment.

Avitech GmbH. Author Tsvetan Penev, Head of Product Management and SWIM Expert