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Visual analytics solution for the aeronautical industry by PERSEO

Crida - ICT

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 programme 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 the 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 decided to migrate to Vaadin, the company chose to go 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 not only in terms of technology but on Java design too, using the most interesting features of J2EE.

More recently, PERSEO’s framework is based on Vaadin and uses Apache Shiro as security framework. Unfortunately, Apache Shiro does not work out of the box with Vaadin push notifications, fact that required more expert help.

We have launched at least 5 projects with 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 at that time 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 geospacial 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, the leading air navigation and aeronautical information service provider in Spain. The 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 on other relevant congresses such as the Spanish environment national congress CONAMA.

Additionally PERSEO is used for SESAR program validations for the European Commission.