Snowflake Software Scoops SESAR SWIM Master Class Top Award

Snowflake Software, specialists in data exchange solutions via Open Standards, has been named the overall best-in-class winner in the SESAR SWIM Master Class, with its prototype Building SWIM B2B Web Services Using Open Standards. An initiative of the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) Joint Undertaking, the Master Class pooled development teams from across Europe, from both industry and academia, to develop prototype SWIM enabled applications based on Network Manager NOP B2B Web Services.

“The goal of the SESAR SWIM Master Class was to further the development and demonstrate the added value of state-of-the-art information technology for air traffic management.” comments Ian Painter, Managing Director at Snowflake Software. “To be recognised as the overall winner in a European wide competition
is a great achievement and something we're really proud of. The opportunity to innovate with operational SWIM Web Services and share those experiences with the wider SESAR JU and ATM community has given us a great platform to build for the future. We're now looking forward to taking these ideas to market and helping realise the benefits of SWIM.”

“We’re extremely passionate about data exchange via Open Standards and believe that through the adoption of an Open Standards approach, considerable operational and implementation benefits can be gained by ATM stakeholders looking to implement future ATM systems based on the principles of SWIM,” explains Ian. “By utilising existing data exchange standards such as AIXM and existing web service standards such as the Web Feature Service, we believe ATM stakeholders can dramatically reduce SWIM implementation costs with proven off-the-shelf technology. The SESAR SWIM Master Class has provided an excellent collaborative platform for us to prototype our ideas with operational data and services”

“We wanted to show that it is possible to rapidly configure and deploy SWIM B2B web services on top of existing Open Standards” explains Debbie Wilson, Business Consultant at Snowflake Software. “We designed our SWIM prototype to consume the existing NOP services and republish them in 3 physical forms: NOP SOAP services; OGC Web Feature Services; and RESTful Web Services.  Importantly we wanted to demonstrate that this could be done through configuration only, paving the way for model driven service generation directly from ISRM being developed under SESAR” explains Debbie.

Snowflake’s SWIM prototype demonstrated how an OGC WFS 2.0 web service could be utilised as an underlying backbone on which SWIM, OGC and RESTful web services could be deployed in accordance to the same conceptual definition. The team at Snowflake configured a range of web service APIs to replicate a subset of the SWIM B2B Airspace Availability Service for retrieving European Airspace Usage Plans for Conditional Route Openings/Closings (EAUP CDR) and Restricted Airspace Allocations (EAUP RSA) underpinned by a single OGC WFS 2.0 instance generated using Snowflake’s off-the-shelf GO Publisher WFS software. GO Publisher WFS is Snowflake’s off the shelf web services product which provides real time on-demand access to data via internationally recognised ISO and OGC standards, RESTful, SOAP and JSON. Snowflake implemented GO Publisher WFS to provide a SOAP wrapper to replicate relevant NOP B2B web services that provide access to AIXM 5.1 features.

With 40 participating organisations, the Master Class has not only progressed the development of SWIM enabled technology solutions but also provided additional educational value within the ATM community around SWIM. “For us, sharing our prototype and findings with other Master Class participants, the SWIM community, and other ATM Vendors participating in the OWS-9-AIM testbeds has been invaluable in promoting and understanding SWIM,” comments Ian Painter. “We’ve been running a publicly available Wiki space where people are able to access and download some of our Master Class services, tools and associated resources. The feedback we have received from the community as a result has been extremely positive.”

Services, tools and associated resources relating to Snowflake’s SWIM Master Class prototype are available for download from www.snowflakesoftware.com/2012/08/sesar-swim-masterclass/.