Following 4 months of dedicated effort, Snowflake Software emerged as SESAR SWIM Master Class Champion at the Best-In-Class ceremony which took place at EUROCONTROL in Brussels on 16 October. Three finalists were given an award while a showcase demonstrated several SWIM applications or prototypes produced by the participants.

Over 40 teams worked intensively over the summer months to see who would stand on top of the podium in the very first SESAR SWIM Master Class challenge. The main ambition was to encourage ATM stakeholders, whether they are involved in SESAR or not, to use current state of the art technologies for demonstrating their ideas in developing ATM application/solution that consume some pioneer SWIM services, namely the EUROCONTROL NM B2B Web services.

As a result of this SESAR initiative, 19 prototypes landed in the basket of a jury of ATM and SWIM experts who thoroughly assessed the solutions, using ATM business, design and technological contributions as main criteria.

The winning prototype named "Building SWIM B2B Web Services Using Open Standards" demonstrated that both the existing NOP B2B services as well as variations in terms of service capability and technology used for their implementation can be realized. This was done using a fully model-driven approach based on open standards and off-the-shelf tools that do not require the writing of any software. To demonstrate this, the prototype consumes existing NOP services and republishes them in 3 flavours: NOP SOAP services; OGC Web Feature Services; and RESTful Web Services.

"For us, one of the most valuable parts of the Master Class for promoting and furthering SWIM has been in sharing our prototype and findings with the other Master Class participants" comments Ian Painter, Managing Director at Snowflake.

Second prize went to M-Click with "SWIM AIXM Web Processing Services", demonstrating how the Deegree GML Framework can be integrated into any Air Traffic Management application environment to provide AIXM based Web Processing Services (WPS) and Web Feature Services (WFS).

Third place went to Thales Air Systems who submitted "BLUESKY", a prototype based on web technologies, demonstrating how dynamic meteorological information can be combined into the Flight planning process.

"The SWIM Master Class went above our expectations. We have been thrilled throughout this journey by the enthusiasm, the spirit and the motivation shown by the participants", commented Dirk Janssens (EUROCONTROL, Project manager P14.04)

What’s next?

"Beyond the success of this event, what we celebrate today is a promising step towards an implementation of SESAR SWIM concepts”, declared, Urban Weisshaar (Lufthansa Systems, WP11).

“In the coming months, we will further focus on the means of accelerating the uptake of SWIM, via supporting a wider SWIM community, developing guidance on SWIM compliance and standards, implementing a SWIM registry of services and preparing the ground for new validation exercises. SWIM is now a reality and given the feedback received we will aim to have another SWIM Master Class”, concluded Paul Bosman (Head of SWIM/EA unit, EUROCONTROL).

Further information on SWIM:                    www.sesarju.eu/swim
(community on LinkedIn, registry, standards...)

The Showcase