Case
Research sector - SOA-based applications development project
Environment
The Flemish Technical Research Institute, is an independent research organisation that provides innovative technological solutions as well as scientifically based advice and support. Its Remote Sensing and Earth Observation department initiated FLEXSYS, an ambitious software project aimed at building a new open Earth Observation (EO) ground segment infrastructure that incorporates and integrates functional modules like image archiving, processing, cataloguing and delivery. Flexsys even allows for plugging with modules of other systems or satellites in the event one of the latter has a problem or an outage.
Solution
The project assigned to Trasys consisted of the study, analysis, definition and implementation - jointly with the Flemish Technical Research Institute - of a complete processing chain as part of a new EO infrastructure for vegetation products, based on the most recent IT developments. Trasys specified and implemented a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in which each FLEXSYS sub-system or external system provides services that are orchestrated by the Integration Sub-System (ISS), the core component of FLEXSYS. This provides a high decoupling between the systems, as only the ISS knows about the orchestration, which furthermore is configurable via a graphical and intuitive interface. Another key component of FLEXSYS implemented by TRASYS is the Archive, permitting the ingestion, storage, management and retrieval of heterogeneous data and metadata. It can be easily configured to be used in their other projects and domains that are completely different from the space ones.
Benefits
FLEXSYS now constitutes a major infrastructure on which the client has now the possibility to install its entire new image processing chains and to migrate the existing ones. Its particularly high flexibility also allows the client to lower many costs by reusing a common infrastructure and knowledge.