PERSEO is an award-winning Vaadin Charts-powered application that is well-known in the Air Traffic Management (ATM) world through the projects of the SESAR program where CRIDA/ENAIRE uses it to validate future ATM concepts.
Creating a cutting-edge data analytics solution
Providing EnAire (Spanish Air Navigation Service Provider) a tool to perform dynamic visual analytics and reports over a data warehouse with KPIs calculated from several data sources related to Air Traffic Management. Lately, a flight track 3D viewer has been integrated into PERSEO using the JavaScript library LUCIAD to playback:
- Simulated traffic sessions
- Real-time traffic data
- Historical traffic data
PERSEO has always been a J2EE application but the first version was based on the JavaServer Faces (JSF) framework with jQuery interventions. When CRIDA migrated to Vaadin, the company went through a long and close collaboration with Vaadin experts. The goals were to get the most out of the Vaadin Web Framework and to create a cutting-edge product in terms of technology and in Java design, using the most interesting features of J2EE.
More recently, PERSEO’s framework is based on Vaadin and uses Apache Shiro as a security framework. Unfortunately, Apache Shiro does not work out of the box with Vaadin push notifications, a fact that required more expert help.
We have launched at least 5 projects with the Vaadin team since the beginning with PERSEO, all of them successful and extremely professional. These years working together have created a long and great professional and personal relationship.
- Miguel García Martínez, R&D IT Engineer
Cross-browser compatible framework for dynamic visual analytics
During the first stages of the collaboration, 2 experts from Vaadin and 2-4 from CRIDA worked together to design a UI that would take advantage of the maximum space of the available display to show data.
One important reason for choosing Vaadin back in 2012 was the promise that Vaadin 7 apps would work perfectly and have the same look and feel on all major web browsers. CRIDA’s client required Internet Explorer then, and Vaadin allowed the company to develop in Chrome and publish the web app with the confidence that it would work on Internet Explorer. Out of the commercial Vaadin components, CRIDA has used Vaadin Charts extensively.
As of 2019, the PERSEO framework was migrated from Vaadin 7 to Vaadin 8 and continues to be in production. Migrating from JSF to Vaadin took around 6-9 months. This last update has been around a month and a half.
Besides Vaadin, the technology stack used by CRIDA includes:
- Microsoft SQL Server for data
- Leaflet and LUCIAD RIA geospatial library for maps
- Highcharts through Vaadin Charts for interactive charts
- iText, Apache POI, and Apache Batik for automatic pdf-excel reports
- Apache Shiro for roles/permissions management
The end users are Air Traffic Management experts from EnAire, Spain's leading air navigation and aeronautical information service provider. Most of the users are Aeronautical Engineers, among them many Air Traffic Controllers.
An awarded data analytics tool for the aeronautical industry
PERSEO has been shown by EnAire as a cutting-edge data analytics tool at the World ATM Congress since 2013. In addition, it has been presented at other relevant congresses such as the Spanish environment national congress CONAMA.
Additionally PERSEO is used for SESAR program validations for the European Commission.