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Have you ever tracked a Federal Express or United Parcel System package? Itís easyósimply log onto the web, enter the appropriate uniform resource locator (URL), airbill (package) number, and the magic of technology takes over from there. Now, the same is true for transportation within the Department of Defense (DOD). As part of the Global Transportation Network (GTN) development, Web now provides an easy-to-access, easy-to-use capability for tracking and assessing DOD transportation movements. Information is available on requisitions, schedules, and actual movements of cargo, passengers, and patients throughout the DOD. The information is accessible by location, time, transportation control number, organization, type of cargo, passenger name, and a multitude of other information qualifiers. Through a network of transportation related systems, GTN knows not only where the box is, but also whatís in it. As GTN displays movements of DOD air transportation occurring within minutes of the actual event, new features of web technology become apparent. GTN has experienced firsthand the effect of web-timeóthe rapid implementation of new web features and improvements. MITRE has created a web prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of accessing integrated transportation data over the web. When the development team evaluated strategy for GTN system implementation, they employed the MITRE prototype and intelligence communityís Intelink capability as the basis of future information systems. Within the timespan of a few months, GTN developed a web capability that accessed the GTN Transportation Corporate Database using web structured query language (SQL) techniques. This capability was followed by implementation of an enhanced web using Javascript; the next stop was Java applets. The original capability is still on line to support all the flavors of web browsers. The enhanced capability requires Netscape-unique Javascript capabilitiesófeatures expected soon in other browsers. The development team selected Netscape based upon its availability as part of the Global Command and Control System. The Java applets in the next release will ease the fielding of GTN, and provide more applications to DOD users worldwide. All of these web implementations require active engineering to assess the capabilities of the usersí information infrastructureóengineers must assess user ability to support basic web browsers and extend their environments to support enhanced web features. Like web-time, engineering time must rapidly react. The technology is rapidly changing, and developers need to be continuously aware of product changes, new beta releases, bug fixes, and other developments. Many operational web capabilities use the beta version of a productóa little bit risky maybe, but usually providing great benefit. The pressure of the marketplace requires vendors to rapidly fix any problems that arise while they continue to improve their products; MITRE engineers from the across the corporation (from the Open System Center to Commander-in-Chief sites) are participating in the revolution, and maintain an awareness of operational impacts and benefits of the revolution for their customers. The benefits of web technology realized by GTN include: Easy to build: Toolsets are available to build web-based applications, access databases, and integrate capabilities with the userís information system environment. The toolsets allow a quicker response to user-driven changes than do traditional system engineering methods (waiting for the next release). Easy to field: Readily available browsers make access to GTN simple. All that is required is coordination with USTRANSCOM to get a user account and the creation of a bookmark in the browser. Limited training: Users are familiar with web applications since they use them at home, and the web applications are usually less complicated than traditional client applications. Built-in security: GTN utilizes the browser-native Secure Socket Layer to encrypt the entire web session. This reduces the possibility of eavesdropping or loss of passwords and other sensitive data as it traverses the worldwide networks. Built-in Common Operating Environment (COE): The commercial community ensures that their products work on common, cross-platform desktop environments. Integration: GTNís web pages execute along with other DOD applications (such as Intelink-S) with the users web environment. These benefits do not come without costóGTN has experienced many challenges while implementing web technology, and the DOD workstation software management community must meet the challenge of supporting the rapidly changing web environment. Distribution of web browsers to the users workstation needs to keep in step with the new web browser features that are being implemented (for example, to distribute and allow features such as Javascript). The networking and security community needs to rapidly assess the impact of web technology, and allow the execution of capabilities within risk management constraints (for instance, to allow Secure Socket Layer ports to be used from inside firewalls to the outside of firewalls). The standards and architecture community needs to keep up with the changing technology, and address challenges through maintaining an up-to-date technical architecture and associated guiding principles for operational and system architectures. These challenges are not trivial, but the revolutionary web technology and benefits of web implementation dictate the challenges must be addressed. Web technology has been around for only a few yearsóit is still in its infancy with a great potential for more leaps in capabilities. GTN anticipates significant benefit from leaps such as intelligent agents, increased multimedia, improved heterogenity in information access, and the wealth of other concepts that the human mind has yet to conceive. For more information, please contact Spurgeon Norman using the employee directory. |
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