Dealing Effectively with the data legacy of your organisation

Dr Stephen Kennett

Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO)

Australian Government's lead agency dedicated to providing science and technology support for the country's defence and security needs.

DSTO:

Seeds and shapes the perceptions and priorities of Defence for the use of science and technology.

Provides scientific and technical support to current Defence operations.

Investigates future technologies for Defence and national security applications.

Ensures Australia is a smart buyer and user of Defence equipment.

Enhances existing capabilities by increasing performance and safety, and reducing the cost of ownership of Defence assets.

Assists industry to become better at supporting Defence’s capability needs.

DSTO

DSTO employs around 2300 staff in facilities at

Edinburgh (SA), Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane,HMAS Stirling (WA), Scottsdale (TAS), and Innisfail (QLD).

DSTO's budget represents approximate 2% of the Defence budget.

Legacy Data

Replace?

Paper based System

COTS Solution

Reporting needed

LegacyData

Manual Effort

Legacy Data

Replace?

Information needed

COTS Solution

Modificationneeded

Modify Code

MoreHardware

LegacyData

RequirementsChange

Why keep legacy (Maintenance) data?

Parts usage Work area usage Time between jobs – work rate Failure Patterns Usage pattern Comparative histories Life of type information

Legal requirement Accountability

Legacy Data Choices

Import into current database- Missing fields- Duplicate data- Handling exceptions- Audit trail

Retain as separate entity- Reporting tool- Database translation- Remove front end?

Who needs the data?

Engineerproblem solvingbest possible answersLife of asset

AuditorIndividual records as enteredWho altered what? when?Five years

Asset ManagerOverview of systemTwo or more asset lifetimes

Army Helicopters

• Aging Aircraft Audit

• DSTO request to examine Cost of Ownership – CN

• Cost– engineering point of view – EE500, EE508

– accountant point of view– ROMAN, SDSS

• Designed to answer maintenance question on

• Parts usage– Work area usage– Time between jobs – work rate– Failure Patterns– Usage pattern– Comparative histories between aircraft

• In a graphical and intuitive way?

Army Helicopters

Paper based Maintenance Records

Data Input

Data Trending

Maintenance Location

MSD Data Quality

• DSTO was requested to investigate the Quality of Data within the Maritime Systems Division of the Defence Material Organisation (DMO).

• Limited resources

• Focused on the Quality of Maintenance Data in Asset Maintenance planning system (AMPS)

Legacy Data• AMPS Current State• Ingres database with an proprietary user interface running across

the defence intranet using Citrix. Separate analysis and reporting program requiring knowledge of both SQL and data table structure.

– 800+ flat tables– No normalisation

• Preferred state:• Intuitive Web interface to multiple databases for both input,

analysis and reporting.– Normalised database

• AMPS data quality has been found insufficient for both engineering and costing analyses. MAIT addresses these issues and introduces new features to promote the collection of high quality maintenance data.

• Analysis capability

• Web interface to AMPS data– Class wide queries– System Status– Job search– Maintenance history

• Input capability with online feedback

MAIT

MAIT Architecture

MAID Server

MAIT Ingres component

Data

AMPS Servers

IIS

Server

Ingres

User with a browser

SQL select requests

andreturned tables

ASPX extensions

Local Data

MAIT

• Data Quality Reporting

•RAM Analysis with Quality Indication

• System Analysis and job tracking

• Failure Data

• Readings Trending and Validation

• System Status Reporting

• Performance Indicator Reporting

• Audit and tracking

IIS MAITIngres

DB

IngresDB

CITRIXAMPS

IIS MAITMSQL

DB

Transition

SummaryEffective Use of Legacy Data.

Know who is target audience

Suggest Web user interfaceIntegrate old and new data on the fly?Separate application layers and data layer

Maintain primary data