DataServices in the real time enterprise

Agenda What is NetJets IntelliJet 1, our legacy IntelliJet 2 Why Persistence Q&A

NetJets – Company overview

Company Overview Founded in 1964 by Gen. Dick Lassiter Purchased in 1984 by RTS Capital Richard Santulli invented fractional ownership 1986 Sold company to Berkshire Hathaway in 1998 for $725M Aircraft priced in the $5M - $48M range Fly in to 5000 airports Will fly flights in 2003 Will fly to 140 countries in 2003 Employs around Pilots Around 500 Aircraft worldwide.. and growing “Multi Billion Dollar” company

What is fractional ownership? Utilize ‘asset’ more efficiently Build economies of scale Allow to sell to 3 rd party when necessary …Works because you can move assets around quickly

Netjets Order book 100 CitationJet 3’s 23 Citation Bravos 78 Citation V Ultras 24 Citation Encores 93 Citation Excels (+7 Options) 17 Citation VIIs 62 Hawker 800XPs (+9 options) 27 Hawker 1000s 50 Citation Sovereigns (+50 options) 50 G-150’s (+50 Options) 50 G-200s (+50 options) 81 Citation Xs 74 Falcon 2000s 25 Falcon 2000EXs (+25 options) 55 Gulfstream IVs 33 Gulfstream Vs 29 BBJs $21B on order(!) 871 aircraft!

Owner profiles Our owners are.. –25% public companies –25% private individuals –50% private companies Among which are.. –Arnold Schwarzenegger –Tiger Woods –Pete Sampras –Warren Buffet & family (of course..) –many more I can’t talk about!

The IntelliJet family of Software

IntelliJet 1 – Our legacy Proprietary in-house development Fat Client GUI Borland C++ BTrieve database Server runs on Novell Operating System Sub-second response time under all conditions Released in 1994

Fleet growth Introduction of IntelliJet 1 Introduction of IntelliJet 2

IntelliJet 1 – The issues BTrieve database outdated and hard to extract business intelligence –Database is not relational Overall outdated technology & architecture Business had outgrown the concepts of IntelliJet 1 –Completely passive system; helps you do the job, does nothing for you Lack of security and auditing features Could not web enable the application Business was changing fast… needed same level of customer service

IntelliJet 2 - The technology challenge Build a system based on industry standards that is –scalable –reliable –Fast response time! –easy to integrate with –‘up’ 24x7 –real-time system –it must support concurrent users

Functional scope of IntelliJet 2 Data maintenance –Vendor data –Aircraft performance data –Airport data CRM –Maintains customer profiles and relationships –Account maintenance Reservation entry system Billing system Aircraft performance engine Operational system (filing of flight plans, flight release) Scheduling system

IntelliJet 1 vs. IntelliJet 2 Collects profile data in ‘free from text notes’ Passive time line Data repository Monthly largely manual billing process Designed to automate operation of ‘dozens’ of aircraft Loosely integrated with 3 rd party systems Profile data in structured format Active timeline Automation and workflow Real time billing process that is mostly automated Designed to scale to 1000’s of aircraft and 1000’s of users Strong integration points with 3 rd party systems

Why Data Services…

Architectural Requirements We knew we wanted a –Distributed system running on commodity hardware –High levels of reliability –System that could deliver near instant response times –Scale seamlessly –approach based on industry standards J2EE Oracle OO-approach We needed data services..

Reason 1: Complexity Reason 1: Complexity

Reason 2 : Volume 9 tabs of information For one individual(!)

Reason 3: Speed L V C Batch System L C V Client-Server V L C IntelliJet 2 V = Importance of volume of Transaction (throughput) L = Importance of response time C = Complexity of transaction

A unique combination of requirements Avoid Database roundtrips –Need extensive caching Scalability and reliability –Distributed system Support complexity –Mature architectural infrastructure –Object Relational Mapping

Why Persistence Java back-end was a corporate mandate Excluded ‘straight JDBC’ as a realistic option Compared product to BEA and IBM + O/R Mapping tools Unique combination of features Best tool to implement complex real-time data model Proven ‘core’ of product

IntelliJet 2 – The implementation

IntelliJet 2, the numbers 103k function points 10x the scope of the predecessor system, IntelliJet 1 About 300 Entity Beans session beans 21Gb collected in 6 months 500 concurrent user 30 developers 3 years of development

Logical Architecture overview - current Logical Architecture overview - current Large grained SB methods All access to data via session beans Completely stateless server Business logic contained in mid-tier J/Integra for COM Integration Entity Beans Session Beans J/Integra Visual Basic GUI Oracle 9i Event Server Timeline

Why not Web Based? Unfortunately Web Based GUI’s are not rich enough to support the needs of the business Java ‘Thick clients’ –Java community only marginally successful at non web based clients –Data showed development would take significantly longer Visual Basic is relatively easy to ‘hook up’ to Java Fast and cheap to develop.. users like it..

Architecture overview - future Move to EdgeXtend Standardize on BEA Move to Oracle RAC Replace J/Integra with SOAP Allow diverse system through a unified interface with web services Modularize system as much as possible Oracle 9i Event Server BEA EdgeXtend SOAP Visual Basic.NET Portal Java JSR 168 other..

A word about web services.. My take on web services –Simply put.. it is plumbing –More momentum than any other technology since HTML –Will ease/replace EAI –Move toward ‘content rendering’ –Will re-vitalize the ASP as a WSP MapPoint Web Service Sabre Credit Card processing What it’s not –Standardized sufficiently –Panacea for data problems –A unifier of data concepts (important distinction!) OASIS, OpenTravel.org etc are!

Hardware servers Started out with Dual Enterprise class Sun E3500 –6-CPU’s –3Gb of Memory Standardized to Dell 2650’s –Windows 2000 Advanced Server –Dual Xeon 2.8Ghz –4Gb of RAM –2 x 1Gb Ethernet

Hardware - Database Servers Started out with Dual Enterprise class Sun E3500 –6-CPU’s –3Gb of Memory Replaced with 3 Sun V880’s –6 Processors 1Ghz Moving to RAC 9i on Intel/Linux EMC Clariion 4700

Timeline & EventServers

Timeline – problem statement Provide lot of data in a Gant-Chart type format to a thousand users in real time and allow them to navigate the data at very high speed –Design cannot be stateless Amount of data per day in the 10Mb range (Java memory usage) Network bandwidth constraints (‘only’ 100Mb available) Guaranteed delivery –Heavy use of caching on client and server –Pub-Sub model

Screenshots - Timeline

TimeLine – Logical Architecture PowerTier Entity Beans View Nodes, representation of visual day for all aircraft Data Nodes, representation of data Client Side Cache Visual Basic J/Integra 3 – 5 days 1 day Filtering Users can ‘opt out’ of certain data

TimeLine Performance Characteristics Can support around 500 users on a Dell 2650 Loading a day of history is around 15 seconds Average publishing time to client on order of 15ms Maximum throughput around 500 Events/sec Limited primarily by VM stability and memory

Lessons learned Real Time enterprise system require specialized architectures including data services solutions Highly multi-threaded Java applications can be extremely complicated to debug Java VM’s are surprisingly unstable under high load conditions

Lessons learned Complex real-time systems ‘push buttons’ vendors are not used to dealing with Coding business logic in J2EE is harder than it should be! Combining Microsoft and Java technologies is achievable Building a real time enterprise system enables new levels of service to our customers, but is not for the ‘faint of heart’

Q & A