Unified Interface for Airline Flight Operations Data
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Business entities face difficulties in accessing and managing information spread across multiple databases and applications, leading to burdensome and inefficient information retrieval processes, as conventional searching tools typically search within a single application and require users to navigate multiple systems.
Innovation Solution
The RAF application is designed to access and retrieve information from multiple applications and databases, providing a unified interface for users to manage aircraft maintenance and scheduling, including flight operations, by searching across various systems and displaying relevant information in a graphical user interface, thereby reducing the need for users to log into multiple applications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If information is stored across multiple applications and databases, then information availability and completeness are improved, but information access complexity and user burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a unified search interface that acts as an intermediary between users and multiple underlying applications/databases. This search interface consolidates access to information scattered across different systems, allowing users to query multiple sources simultaneously without needing to know which specific application contains the required information.
Solution Approach 2:
The search interface is designed to perform multiple functions: it can search across different applications, filter results by relevance, and present unified results from heterogeneous data sources. This universal search capability eliminates the need for users to separately access each application, reducing operational complexity while maintaining comprehensive information availability.
2Productivity
If conventional searching tools are used within a single application, then search speed and simplicity are improved, but information completeness and cross-application coverage are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple single-application search functions into a unified cross-application search interface. This consolidation maintains the speed and simplicity of single-application searching while extending the search scope to cover information across all connected applications and databases, thereby achieving both search efficiency and information completeness.
3Reliability
If users must navigate multiple applications to access information, then information accuracy and source-specific functionality are preserved, but time consumption and operational burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
The search interface performs preliminary actions by pre-establishing connections to multiple applications and pre-processing search capabilities across all sources. When a user initiates a search, the system simultaneously queries all connected applications, retrieving accurate information from its original source while eliminating the time users would otherwise spend manually navigating through each application.
4Stability of the object's composition
If information is kept in separate applications, then application-specific data integrity and functionality are maintained, but system complexity and user training requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The unified search interface serves as an intermediary layer that maintains separate application boundaries and data integrity while providing a simplified access point. The interface translates user queries into appropriate application-specific searches and consolidates results, thereby maintaining data integrity within each application without requiring users to understand the underlying system complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of displaying an electronic report on a GUI that includes receiving a user identifier and an authentication identifier associated with a user gaining access to a first application; displaying, on the GUI, a first window associated with the first application; displaying, via the first window, a listing of monitored flights; receiving, via the first window, a request; accessing, using the first application, a second application and a third application that are different from each other and the first application; updating the displayed listing of monitored flights using information accessed from the second and third applications; wherein a flight has a delay greater than two hours; and receiving, via the first window, a request for the electronic report for the flight; displaying, on the GUI and via a second window, the electronic report for the flight that includes information from each of the second and third applications.