Joint Operational Support Airlift Aid to Mission Scheduling

Joint Operational Support Airlift Aid to Mission Scheduling (JOSAAMS) was developed by DPRA for the military customer and is currently deployed. The system allows the management of all the services' operational support aircraft by USTRANSCOM. The JOSAAMS system is a combination of modules that collect data, reprocess data for geographic display, and provide a geographical user interface to a portion of the Joint Air Logistics Information System (JALIS) database. The system is divided into two primary components:

• The server component—Updates the JOSAAMS tables with new information provided by JALIS and runs in the JOSAAMS server.
• The client component—provides the geographical interface and polls the JOSAAMS server looking for JALIS updates.

The server component expects data to be passed from the JALIS database via a cron daemon residing on the JALIS server. This daemon is scheduled to execute at an interval determined by the system administrator, at which time it queries the JALIS database (Oracle) and writes its output to a series of text (.txt) files onto the JOSAAMS server.

When the JOSAAMS server module (always running in the background) detects that JALIS has posted new (.txt) files, it then converts the (.txt) files into a format required to support the geographic displays on the JOSAAMS clients. When the data conversion is complete, the (.txt) files are renamed (.old) to indicate that they have been processed.

The JOSAAMS client consists of two modules, the user interface (JosaamsClient.exe) and the JOSAAMS polling module (PollJalisClient.exe). Clicking on the JOSAAMS icon that was placed on the user’s Windows desktop when JOSAAMS was installed launches the user interface module.

Double-clicking the JOSAAMS icon will launch the JOSAAMS startup program (JosaamsClientStart.exe), which will check the JOSAAMS server for updates to the client software. If updates are found, they are installed onto the client before the JOSAAMS user interface is launched.

Using this design, the client's CPU is used to run the interface, thereby dramatically reducing the workload on the network. The JOSAAMS server performs all back-end data processing while the geographic user interface is running on the client's CPU. If future updates to the JosaamsClient.exe are posted on the server, each client will automatically see the update the next time JOSAAMS is launched.