RTI announces the successful delivery of the first version of the Joint Operations Tactical Interoperability Database (JOTID) tool. Working with the Logistics Management Institute (LMI), RTI developed and delivered the JOTID program to the NATO C3 Agency (NC3A) in the midst of an extremely aggressive schedule and budget. This project continues the RTI tradition of success and enhances RTI's reputation for delivering quality projects under pressure.

What is JOTID?

The primary purpose of the JOTID tool is to assess and manage communications interoperability between various NATO forces and countries. It does this by combining into one tool: a relational database to store information on communications equipment for different countries, an assessment engine which calculates interoperability between equipment using either known results or predictions based on technical characteristics, and a GUI front-end that provides a number of data management and interoperability "query" tools. The JOTID tool is extremely flexible and can operate in either a stand-alone (single machine) or client/server (LAN/WAN) environment. The user interface was written using the Java programming language and communicates with the database via the JDBC (Java DataBase Connectivity) standard.

Why is JOTID Important?

JOTID will give NATO, and it's member countries, a single integrated tool that can help automate much of the work related to interoperability management. Interoperability management within NATO today is a manually intensive process, performed by domain experts, using information which is scattered and hard to find. JOTID allows this information to be stored in a common repository and easily retrieved. In addition, JOTID provides tools to use this data in an automated fashion, so that a non-expert user can perform interoperability assessments, and expert users can do their work more efficiently. Future enhancements to the JOTID tool will provide additional functionality and increase its usefulness even further. One of the important aspects of the JOTID tool is its user interface. There are a few current tools which provide some interoperability management functions, but these tools typically have non-inuitive user interfaces, which causes them to be not widely used. JOTID's graphical interface was designed to be as simple to use and intuitive as possible, and uses concepts common to NATO and military users. It also provides an "integrated information package", which means you don't have to switch applications to find related information. For instance, to view equipment details from anywhere in JOTID, you just double-click on the name of the equipment which you wish to view.

What are the main features of JOTID?