The RISE of Phoenix

  • Published
  • By David Canestrare
  • Information
ROME, New York --  AFRL's Enterprise Information Management Branch (RISE) is pleased to report that version 1.1.7 of its Phoenix information management (IM) services system has been released for use by Department of Defense (DoD) researchers, both internal and external. Phoenix provides a collection of IM services facilitating the efficient storage, filtering, brokering, routing, and dissemination of information to edge consumers. In addition to providing publish-and-subscribe and query capabilities to clients and systems, Phoenix supplies specific services addressing the management and dissemination of streamed information. Further, a recently developed cursor-on-target router service that is fully integrated with Phoenix IM technology is also now available. As with the Joint Battlespace Infosphere implementations preceding it, Phoenix is free and available upon request to all DoD organizations and contractors working under DoD contract.

The Air Force (AF) and the DoD have been moving towards a network-centric concept of operations for several years. The advent of service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based systems has increased the likelihood of actually implementing the conceived overarching Global Information Grid. SOA-based systems group functionalities around business processes and expose them as packaged, interoperable services. These services enable applications to exchange data as they perform their individual or collaborative business processing. Collectively, these SOA characteristics provide the perfect blend of rigidness and flexibility needed for effective IM operations.

AFRL's pioneering work in the field of IM, particularly that performed since the late 1990s, has largely succeeded in overcoming earlier, Scientific Advisory Board-documented concerns regarding AF shortcomings in the area of systems integration and IM. In this capacity, the success of Project Phoenix exemplifies the lab's ongoing commitment to continuous advancment of leading-edge information technologies. Accordingly, in defining a meaningful SOA-based IM solution--one relevant now and well into the foreseeable future--Project Phoenix has leveraged not only in-house IM knowledge, but the expertise of colleagues and customers as well. Further, various checkpoints throughout the Phoenix development effort have ensured the technology's alignment with respective AF and DoD visions of current and future net-centric operations.