Technology

The Arconics Platform

The Arconics platform is designed to meet the needs of aircraft operators. General purpose applications and technologies require extensive customization to deploy and training to use.  Arconics software delivers all of the necessary features out of the box, and does not require extensive training for users or administrators.

Arconics’ development team combines world class technical expertise in our core technologies with a deep understanding of the airline documentation, processes and workflows.

At the heart of the Arconics platform is a sophisticated web-based editor, document management system, and messaging and communications system. The document data structures are XML. The back-end is built on industry-standard SQL databases, J2EE application servers and the web browser interface is built on Java and AJAX.  

These technologies offer specialized functionality not found elsewhere, such as multi-user and collaborative editing of complex documents, real time WYSIWYG editing even for complex attributes, and efficient handling of very large documents. They also provide an enterprise-class publishing, communications and messaging platform. 

Arconics software is typically delivered as a hosted managed service, but can be deployed as an onsite application that runs on any J2EE application server, and most common database platforms.

Arconics software is updated frequently to add new features and support the evolving business requirements of our customers.

Design Philosophy

The core design principle behind the Arconics software is Single Source Publishing, which allows the same content to be used in different documents and in different formats. A single Master copy of each document is stored in XML – a versatile and open data format, and web, print, and EFB renderings of the document are generated automatically. The labour-intensive and expensive work of editing, revising and approving changes need only be carried out once.

The basic design philosophy behind Arconics user interface is user-centered design (UCD); a philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behavior in real world tests with actual users.

The chief difference from other design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the software developers approach.

Arconics has a strong capability in useability engineering, and continuously seeks to improve the user experience and deliver software that is reliable, functional and easy to use.

Interoperability

Arconics software is designed to be highly interoperable.  It can integrate with existing enterprise systems for authentication and single sign-on, and to a host of enterprise applications to support processed and data transfers that run across systems.

Arconics Hosting

Many airlines depend on Arconics to deliver Manual Manager and AirPortal as a managed service. The applications are fully monitored, managed and supported 24x7 in a Tier 1 hosting environment. Customers can be up and running in live operations within 10 days of requesting service.

If you want to get running fast, at low cost, and with guaranteed performance levels, then Arconics Hosting is the perfect solution.

Standard Arconics Hosting includes the following;

• Bandwidth: 100 Mb/s with multiple redundant links.
• Backup: 7 daily backups, rolling weekly backup, rolling monthly backup. Backups stored offsite.
• Firewall protection.
• Physical access controls with multi-factor authentication.
• Dell PowerEdge Xeon Server running Linux Fedora Core.
• Storage: SCSI  RAID 5, Hot Swap.
• Conditioned power and UPS / Diesel backup.