An Interface Transformation Strategy for AF-IPPS
December 2012
Ronald J. Albuquerque, The MITRE Corporation
Christopher W. Hockert, The MITRE Corporation
Ralph C. San Antonio, The MITRE Corporation
ABSTRACT
The Air Force Integrated Personnel and Pay System (AF-IPPS) Program is intended to replace the systems currently used for AF Active Duty, Reserve and Air National Guard components; AF-IPPS will replace the Military Personnel Data System (MilPDS) and the Defense Joint Military (Pay) System (DJMS) which currently perform these functions. The core of AF-IPPS will be implemented using an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform such as PeopleSoft, Oracle, or SAP.
Like other AF and Department of Defense (DoD) ERP programs, AF-IPPS is expected to have 100+ interfaces with 90+ external trading partners, using approximately 640 uniquely defined data transactions. Experience with other DOD ERP programs indicates that a high number of interfaces pose technical, cost and schedule risk to the program.
The purpose of the interface strategy prototype effort was to mitigate this risk by demonstrating the applicability of modern messaging and communication approaches to insulate the ERP from interface changes by the legacy applications, allowing them to gradually evolve to the new communications and data standards with minimal impact to AF-IPPS.
The prototype development effort leveraged information content from the predecessor Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System (DIMHRS) program along with actual AF-IPPS planned interface content. Using this information, the prototype effort began with the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) definition of a person object. Subsequent effort included both application development and the integration of open-source and Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) applications. The result was a prototype AF-IPPS translation layer that successfully implements a publish/subscribe interface model. While the translation layer was not tested for performance it is built with software components that are widely used in the software industry and could thus be enhanced to meet specific performance requirements.
A next step for prototype is integration with the Enterprise Level Security (ELS) service provided by the Air Force. This paper describes the interface prototype design and the details of both the person object definition and the translation layer implementation.
Additional Search Keywords
Air Force Integrated Personnel and Pay System (AF-IPPS), Military Personnel Data System (MilPDS), Defense Joint Military (Pay) System (DJMS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, prototype development, Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System (DIMHRS), PeopleSoft, Oracle, eXtensible Markup Language (XML), publish/subscribe interface model, Enterprise Level Security (ELS), modernizing business practices, Defense Finance & Accounting Services (DFAS), secure file transfer protocol (SFTP), Air Force, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Interface Control Documents (ICDs)
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