Past Performance:  SwampWorks Knowledge Management Tools (SWKMT)


Customer:

SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego and Office of Naval Research

Dragon's Role:
  • Agent-based computing systems architecture design and development
  • Software team leadership
  • Software testing and test management
  • Systems documentation including design documents and user’s manual
  • Fleet experimentation

Problem:
  • Need to reduce research workload of Fleet analysts
  • Be able to provide net-centric tools that do not require additional hardware or software
  • Need for tactics, techniques and procedures for applying advanced agent technology in operational environment

Solution:
  • Develop net-centric, agent-based computing tools to provide information-challenged Fleet users with technology based information/knowledge management tools to ease burden of daily tasks
  • Interact with Fleet users to combine Limited Objective Experiments and iterative software deliveries to allow customer to evolve the technology to meet user requirements and develop tactics, techniques and procedures


SWKMT Project Description

Dragon provides the Space & Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) Systems Center San Diego (SSC-SD), Code 273, with systems and software engineering support for the SwampWorks Knowledge Management Tools (SWKMT) project.  The SWKMT project objective is to apply agent-based technology to help automate the Fleet's current manual efforts to build daily intelligence products.  SWKMT agents search a number of external intelligence and operational data repositories (databases, web pages, email accounts) including: SeaLink, Command and Control Personal Computer (C2PC) database, Near Real Time Dissemination, National Maritime Intelligence Center web pages, Web-Enabled Scheduling System, and US Message Transmission Format-based messages.  SWKMT is currently used by three U.S. Navy Fleets.

SWKMT is one of a series of such tasks supporting the Office of Naval Research.  SWKMT and its predecessor – the Expeditionary Sensor Grid Enabling Experimentation – focused on investigating advanced experimental ISR sensor and information management concepts supporting tactical Navy users.  As lead technical developer and architect, Dragon staff is responsible for the architecture and direction of products built.

The SWKMT project is an agent-based system.  The tool suite is a hybrid system using Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Application Services as its grid infrastructure with a web browser-based user interface.  SWKMT has a service-based architecture and supporting Net-Centric Warfare efforts.  Dragon developed Java-based agents both as external applications using J2EE services, as well as deploying agents as a long duration-asynchronous web service when needed.  All inter-agent/web application communication is via eXtensible Markup Language.  Applications generally use Sun Web Services Tools; the data cache is hosted on Oracle 9.i, and interfaces are provided to legacy products, such as MSOffice.

As development increments complete, the newly integrated baseline software is subjected to a limited objective experiment.  These experiments may be ashore or afloat, and the results provide valuable information on software utility and user interactions to help guide the next development increment.  The objective is a flexible development process, carefully managed to ensure effective support to the end-user.

SWKMT operational data flow.  Agents identify which vessels are of interest (VOIs) and then gather information on those vessels from multiple data sources to provide latest status.  Agents package and send the information in a variety of formats to users based on user specifications.  The end-user may display updated VOI information on a map or in tabular format.



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