Products

Data Interpretation Service Engine Overview (DISE)

The Data Interpretation Service Engine (DISE) is the key data analysis component of the DPS. Designed for growth and customization and capitalizing on BGI’s Engineering expertise, DISE provides a unique, cost effective solution to today’s complex after-action-review data analysis requirements.

The DISE includes a Custom Control Interface (CCI). Custom Controls are unique plug-ins tailored to the needs of an operator. These plug-ins provide data presentation, such as cockpit instrument repeaters, strip charts, data views and navigation, and tabular displays. The CCI plug-in architecture allows modular extensibility and customization of the final DISE application.

Like all individual products in the suite, DISE is a stand-alone application that remains time-synchronized with all other suite products. Time synchronization is accomplished through network communications between suite products. This makes the product scalable; in the simplest form, each suite application can be delivered separately. Or, a single DISE with its custom controls may run concurrently with D3D on the same PC. In a more advanced configuration, multiple PCs may each be running D3D and/or DISE applications. When configured properly, all machines will perform a time-synchronized debrief, while exchanging command and control inputs from the user. The design easily scales from a laptop system to a theater application with few changes.

For the software developer, DISE offers an application framework that interfaces to multiple, arbitrary data sets and enables rapid application development. This is accomplished through the DISE Core, a Data Abstraction Layer (DAL), and a Custom Control Interface (CCI). The combination of these elements creates a rapidly scalable and extensible application enabling consumption of multiple data sources, user interfaces and display formats.

The DISE Core interacts and provides synchronization with the DPS. At a system level, this gives each Custom Control (CC) access to the current state of the DPS. The Core also provides basic interfaces for viewing the DISE configuration, monitoring health and status, as well as managing the available Custom Controls.

The DAL is capable of storing arbitrary data formats and therefore requires no internal unit conversions or pre-processing. Customer data loads directly via plug-in libraries that abstract the customer format and load it into the DAL. The DAL is capable of employing multiple data set plug-ins simultaneously and dynamically determines which plug-in is appropriate for a given data format. The DAL provides an API that allows each Custom Control (CC) access to the data, allowing the CC to be re-used across platforms.

A Custom Control is a self-contained library that serves to view, present, or otherwise manipulate the data in support of the operator’s needs. Multiple Custom Controls may be licensed and loaded concurrently, permitting simultaneous views of the data. The Custom Control options are plentiful; common uses include cockpit instrument repeaters, both manual and automated, as well as strip charts and tabular data windows.

Cockpit Instruments Custom Control (ciCC)

The ciCC is a DISE Custom Control providing synthetic cockpit instrumentation and display re-creation for analysis within the DPS. This capability is separate from the replay of recorded cockpit video and allows for flexible re-creation of cockpit instruments, displays, and controls, which are not captured through video recording systems. The range of options is impressive; reuse of avionics models produced by aeronautical engineering teams, horse-shoe replicas, and custom displays tailored to an analyst are all ciCC options. Even better, any individual display or combination of displays follows a common API and may be interchanged or introduced quickly and efficiently.

Additionally, if the data is available, the ciCC provides the ability to ‘shadow’ the pilot’s actions and display the active page the pilot had selected during the flight. Of course, the debrief operator can always override the pilot-selected page with a page of his choosing! All pages that are available in-flight are available in the debriefing. The ciCC leverages the DISE core, which provides access to recorded mission data from the source media, or from archive files created using an archival tool. This gives the ciCC scalability – using manual or automated commands, the ciCC switches the displays between aircraft, allowing presentation of displays from a single ship or a mix of multiple ships.

As with all products in the DPS, the ciCC playback is synchronized with other suite components and receives command and control from remote stations, manned or automated, to achieve a uniform debriefing.

Data Analysis Custom Control (daCC)

The Data Analysis Custom Control (daCC) provides the capability to display aircraft data in a variety of graphical formats, including real-time dynamic strip charting during a debriefing session. The daCC configures itself to graph the data that is presented by DISE. For example, DISE may be configured with data definition files for differing vehicles. The daCC uses the data definitions from DISE to auto-generate its GUIs. These data format differences are presented to the end-user without recompilation of the software; the data set definition is changed without recompiling or rebuilding the daCC.

As a DPS component, the daCC itself supports system interaction. Commands such as ‘slider reposition’ are tied to the DISE API. The DISE transmits these commands and notifies other suite applications of the event. This results in coordinated, time-synchronized presentation across applications.

Data Viewer Custom Control (dvCC)

The Data Viewer Custom Control (dvCC) is provided as an example for Custom Control development. The dvCC accesses the Core DAL and presents the data that is active at the current mission time. The data viewer configures itself to operate on the entire range of data available to a CC and displays the data in gridded form. The operator may use the controls to ‘browse’ through the data set to view various parameters. Furthermore, the dvCC provides interactivity with the suite, i.e., by stepping through events, the time line is repositioned to the time of the event.