Inspection of Operational Information system in Aviation Industry

The Operational Information System always has a critical dependence upon information that is acquired, processed, transported, and delivered with the well-defined quality of service properties. The ultimate intention is to attain competitive advantages in decision-making, customer service, and to react in a timely manner to changes in current state. Any business, today, must manage the processing and communications performed by multiple components of a large-scale distributed application. In this blog-post the research and commercial opportunities presented by operational information systems are described, and their strategic importance to leading airlines, around the world. 

Increased competition in the airline industry is stimulating the development of new applications of Information Technology, including a new strategic focus on electronic commerce at leading Airlines. Traditionally, large enterprise computing has relied on using clusters of mainframes running proprietary information systems software. The traditional online transaction processing systems (OLTP) support applications that automate the majority of the airline’s operational services. 

It is easier said than done to modify these existing OLTP applications to accommodate a changing business. Many of these applications were developed in assembly language and have evolved over more than 30 years. At first, the applications were designed to implement specific business models and offer little flexibility to support new business processes. In response to these limitations, a novel strategy pursued is the addition of mid-tier enterprise information systems, termed Operational Information Systems (OIS). 

*Image Courtesy - Redline CMC Ltd. 

The new mid-tier OIS, considered in concert with the legacy OLTP system, is the basis on which Airlines constructs new applications and improves current business operations, including improving the "Customer Experience". The key element to their success is the development of new mission-critical software and hardware infrastructures that support this effort. An interesting approach to building new systems pursued by Airlines is to tap its legacy operational systems, and then reproduce desired images of operational information for new, mid-tier operational information systems (OIS). The idea is to create additional systems on which new business applications can be developed, without jeopardizing already existing systems and their operation. 

The overall architecture of the OIS components has evolved over time with changed scalability and availability requirements. Initially, the system was a proof of concept that acquired immediate success and was deployed well-beyond its designed capacity. The currently deployed system has been refined to meet the scalability and availability requirements. Nevertheless, Technocrats are continuing their research into the more efficient, saleable, and low latency processing and distribution of events, by evolving communication infrastructures and storage engines. Finally, they are investigating the creation of highly available COTS cluster machines for the new mid-tier OIS' operational data engines and stores, so that these systems can offer the availability and reliability now offered by the existing legacy infrastructure.