Back to SITA ATI Messaging Journal Q1 2009
SITA Messaging portfolio
Maximizing value for the ATI community
Many ATI business-critical operations depend on the exchange of messages via the SITA Messaging service which sits at the heart of the community.
The SITA Messaging service is used by many different applications which have different business criticality and performance needs. Historically, while application experts understand the specific value created by message exchanges, SITA concentrated on providing reliable and secure delivery of messages - ie, acting as a post office - knowing how to deliver messages to all the ATI addresses in the world but without knowing the purpose of the messages. As a result, the Messaging service has no ATI application-specific handling or reporting functionality.
Some applications may need 'express delivery' for their messages - meaning they need them delivered either immediately or not at all, and will want to be told within minutes if delivery is impossible. Others may need their messages to be delivered in the precise sequence of transmission. And still others may need a guarantee that the messages will be delivered eventually, but with no particular urgency. The Type B Messaging standards offer various levels of delivery priority, but these layers apply across all traffic of all customers so there is no application-specific or customer-specific prioritization.
Rather than simply being a postman - with the goal to enhance the Messaging service offering as well as create greater value to the ATI community - SITA is now looking to evolve the Messaging service by adding a layer of intelligence about the needs of message-sending applications.
SITA's Aircraft Communications & Messaging (ACM) business line product development for Messaging will be guided by working directly with our customers to identify how messaging already creates value for them through the applications it supports, and how this value can be maximized for the benefit of the ATI community.
Messaging Application Identification
This is leading us towards developing the intelligence to identify the applications generating messaging traffic and provide support which is customized to meet each application's needs.
ATI application standards that specify use of Type B messages define the use in addresses of specific Office Function Designator codes per airline department and the identification of the message purpose in a 'Standard Message Identifier' field at the top of each message; this would be the basis for the development of the intelligence to detect the application that generated each message going through the Type B switch.
With the development of layers of ATI application-specific intelligence on top of the messaging switching systems, Messaging Application Identification filters can be implemented and then progressively improved to handle applications' specific requirements.
With this kind of capability, we would be able to radically change how messaging traffic could be processed, logged and reported on, in order to meet specific customer business requirements. We could also possibly work with customers to implement special optional support capabilities as required.
The following diagram gives an overview of some of the applications ATI Messaging serves.
Click on image for an enlargement.
Implanting ATI application know-how in the messaging brain
With this initiative, we are trying to build ATI intelligence on the traffic passing through our Messaging service:
- Messaging is the 'heart' of the ATI, pumping industry information through the veins of SITA's network service
- Transformation of the Messaging portfolio will create an ATI Application Management layer in the Messaging systems which will know how to handle ATI information and how to process the messages to bring more value to the ATI community
We look forward to the challenge of this ambitious ATI application transformation of our messaging portfolio.
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