Design and Analysis of an Object-Oriented Database of Electronic Warfare Data

Book excerpt: The Electronic Warfare Integrated Reprogramming Database (EWIRDB) is the primary Department of Defense (DoD) approved source of electronic warfare (EW) data. Its utilization in the areas of battle planning and EW research enables our military forces to effectively exploit the electromagnetic spectrum and shape the outcome of battle. The EWIRDB, however, lacks a viable conceptual data model. EWIRDB data are represented in disjoint parametric tree models that are implementation-oriented; to the extent that the tree structures are used as conceptual modeling tools, their hierarchical form is too restrictive to adequately describe EW data semantics. Moreover, these structures address only technical parametric data. Associated administrative, reference, and comment data are excluded. In practice, the EWIRDB is described in terms of the coded and record-based format of its output media, not its conceptual model. The primary goal of this thesis is the development of a semantically-improved conceptual design of EWIRDB data based on the object-oriented data model (OODM). The secondary goal of the thesis is the specification of a logical design, based on the new conceptual design, to provide the structure for a subsequent implementation of EWIRDB data on the Multimodel and Multilingual Database System (MDBS) in the Laboratory for Database Systems Research at the Naval Postgraduate School. The results of the work contained herein are: (1) an object-oriented conceptual design of EWIRDB data that supports the semantics of both the file format and tree structures, and (2) the specification of an object-oriented logical design for an M2 DBS implementation of sample EWIRDB data