Military Communications and Information Technology: A Trusted ...

Chapter 1: Concepts and Solutions for Communications and Information Systems
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For instance Microsoft SharePoint is a full-blown system that has its own database
schema, its own data, business and presentation layers. But AirC2IS needs to
behave as one system for the user like reaching SharePoint content from application
side or vice versa. Also, search system must search not only SharePoint content, but
also mission data maintained by the application side. It is apparent that the system
must provide some utilities to manage the system centrally.
Having such different architectures inside one system, those components or
systems are need to be included or developed with a modular approach and have
a loosely coupled design. Basic principles followed in design of AirC2IS are:
• Modular approach, loosely coupled design,
• Separation of concerns,
• Separation of mission functions,
• Following open and industry standards.
To achieve this, AirC2IS utilizes a SOA based modern architecture. First step
is determining the decoupled components of the system like in Fig. 3. Next, it is
necessary to clarify services and contracts for the integration of components.
In this architecture, there are various COTS and modules to be harmonized
into one system. A few of these architectural decisions will be specified in the following
section.
IV. Harmonizing independent architectures
As shown in Fig. 3, AirC2IS composed of an integration system which is built
on MS-BT, a portal system built on SharePoint Portal and application services built
with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) of .NET framework. Though
all of them having different architectures of their own, they need to work like one
system. For instance the system must have a centralized logging system, compatible
exception handling capabilities, and centralized monitoring components.
Figure 3. Modularizing AirC2IS
AirC2IS architecture harmonizes all those components by providing decoupling
interfaces between boundaries instead of forcing these architectures to
change. These core components are explained in detail in the following sections.