Intelligent Gateways for Network-Centric Interoperability

"The requirements for true network-centric operations extend beyond the physical integration of heterogeneous networks and systems to include the timely delivery of the right information from the right source to the requestor across the network. Thisconcept is essential for battlespace information superiority where all units share a common operational picture but not all information is required or even desired by each unit. The challenges include well-known issues with integrating incompatible, legacysystems as well as information brokering and management between these systems. This proposal explores an automated system integration framework based on ALPHATECH's eXtensible Distributed Architecture (XDA). Central to our approach is the development ofintelligent gateways as hubs to connect legacy systems and networks to an Internet Protocol (IP) based network. These gateways not only provide a translation service to a common object model or ontology, but also message marshalling, brokering, andconversion services to ensure information delivery. Phase I will determine the feasibility of this architecture and develop requirements for its implementation in Phase II. Most commercial and government organizations have invested huge sums of money onlegacy software systems. There is a great demand to integrate these systems with new systems so that information can be shared and become available to the right users. The technology developed in th