Multi Level Disruption-tolerant Database Services (ML DDS)

In time-critical situations, such as Air Force logistics support, ground combat operations, and others, military personnel urgently require the ability to access data which may be stored in large, remotely-hosted databases. Such large repositories, coupled with advances in Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and other access mechanisms, provide a tremendous resource for users who are able to access them via high-speed network connections; however, for military personnel at the “tactical edge” (e.g., the flightline, or on foot patrol), their communications links to these same networks may depend on mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), whose chief characteristics often include intermittent, low bandwidth access to higher-echelon resources. In such an environment, traditional data-access mechanisms—which have almost universally been developed on the assumption of broadband network access—cannot function. As an ironic and often tragic result, the military personnel most in need of urgent information are thus frequently the least-able to access that information. The effort under this SBIR is aimed at providing such network disadvantaged users with a useful subset of large-database functionality, using new mechanisms which respect the very real network limitations imposed by tactical radio networks, mobile satellite terminals, and other small communications devices.