EUROCONTROL is an intergovernmental organisation with 41 Member and 2 Comprehensive Agreement States.
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AFOD is a SWIM service offered by the European AIS Database (EAD) which is a pan-European aeronautical information service provider, certified against the European Commission Implementing Regulation CIR (EU) 2017/373. AFOD provides essential information with regards to enabling the exchange of data with EAD SDD (AIXM 5.1) through a system-to-system connection, using the EAD AIMSL interfaces. AIMSL (AIM Service Layer) provides a SOAP Web Services based standard interface to the same SDD functions. The users are able to extract data from EAD using the following general scenario: 1. User sends a SOAP request to AIMSL, 2. AIMSL forwards the request to SDD, 3. SDD performs the requested actions, 4. SDD sends a SOAP response to AIMSL, 5. AIMSL forwards the response to the User. The EAD AFOD service offers two means of requesting/extracting data from EAD: - a feature request method based on OGC Web Feature Service with the temporal extension (WFS-TE) - a dataset extraction method based on OASIS web service notifications (WS-N).
EUROCONTROL is an intergovernmental organisation with 41 Member and 2 Comprehensive Agreement States.
AFOD provides access to the aeronautical data stored in the EAD.
The European Aeronautical Information Services Database (EAD) is a centralised reference database of quality-assured aeronautical information that enables users to retrieve and download AIS data in real time. It provides instant access to the most up-to-date digital aeronautical information from the ECAC and ECAC+ areas, from Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs), pre-flight information bulletins (PIBs), briefing facility services and the AIP library.
AFOD uses OGC Web Feature Service queries and an additional subscription service to provide on-demand aeronautical information encoded in AIXM 5.1 format.
Query and aggregate data from different sources, such as EAD, in order to produce e.g. flight manuals, FMS (Flight Management System)
Use aeronautical data and information in preparation and execution of GAT/OAT flight operations.
Provide and use aeronautical information/data supporting airport operations in order to facilitate the oversight of the airside operations, landside operations as well as information management related to the collection and distribution of daily flight information.
Provide and consume aeronautical information in order to discharge the obligations of the ICAO Member States in line with the Chicago Convention and its Annexes, such as Annex 15 (Aeronautical Information Services), Annex 4 (Aeronautical Charts), facilitate cross-border data coordination, supporting LoAs, SLAs, etc.
Use aeronautical information and data in FDP (Flight Data Processing) systems and ARO (Air Traffic Services Reporting Office) services.
Use aeronautical information and data supporting the provision of air traffic and flow management, CNS (Communication Navigation Surveillance) services, aeronautical information and meteorologic services, SAR (Search and Rescue) services.
Use aeronautical information and data for the management and provision of the European ATM Network services including ATFM, ATFCM, IFPS, etc.
The methods implemented by the service offer a large palette of aeronautical information data, required by customers who consume and provide harmonized and up-to-date data.
AFOD provides a query interface by means of the standardized OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) returning existing data according to the applied filters. When temporal filters are used, AFOD provides a temporal query interface (based on a Temporal Extension (WFS-TE)) returning the requested data in accordance with the AIXM 5.1 temporality.
AFOD offers a web service providing AIXM 5.1 files for consumption.
In order to be able to access and use AFOD, Consumers need to become EAD clients (Data User or Developer) and sign the Client Agreement. More in detail: 1. the data consumer has to register as an EAD Data User or EAD Commercial User Client, 2. the Organisation of the Data Consumer requires an AIMSL (B2B) license, 3. the Data Consumer user requires an AIMSL Certificate for authentication purposes, 4. the Data Consumer user has to provide an AIMSL Service Request Form with, as a minimum, the sdd-wfs and/or SDDDownloadWebService.
The AFOD consumers may use EAD data in order to integrate it in data products or facilitate their operations. Reselling EAD data is prohibited.
Customers can be negatively impacted when data usage is disproportionate and for extended periods. As protection mechanism, AFOD service will restrict excessive requests originated from the same client.
The authentication is based on WS-Security and requires all users to sign the requests using an X.509 certificate received from EAD.
In order to consume the AFOD services, an AIMSL Service Request Form has to be submitted through the EAD service desk, indicating the desired services. The form is available in the EAD Service/System Information OneSky Team.
0.955 sec delay for 95% of messages.
0.647 sec delay for 95% of messages.
The throughput of the service has a capacity of 16900 requests per hour.
The throughput of the service has a capacity of 18000 requests per hour.
The availability of AFOD Service is at least 99,975%.
The unplanned unavailability of AFOD services shall not exceed 30 minutes (RTO = 30 minutes). In case of incidents AFOD service ensures that no data is lost or corrupted (RPO = 0).
When speaking about data confidentiality, data is encrypted at the application or Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) level, above the transport layer. AFOD service is accessed via HTTPS over a VPN connection which encrypts messages and payloads using TLS protocol.
The AFOD service payloads are wrapped with MD5 checksum algorithm providing the possibility to verify that data didn't suffer unintended corruption. Further, data integrity is ensured by the Datagram-TLS v.1.2 (which is based on TLS v1.2) provided by the VPN client.
Airspace Data Repository
Aeronautical features on demand
Aeronautical Information Management
AIM Service Layer
Aeronautical Information Publication
Aeronautical Information Regulation and Control
ATM Information Reference Model
Aeronautical Information Services
Aeronautical Information Exchange Model
Airspace Management Cell
Air Traffic Services Reporting Office
Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management
Air Traffic Flow Management
Air Traffic Management
Conditional Route
Committed Information Rate
Communication, Navigation & Surveillance
AMC - manageable Danger Area
Data Operations Provider
European AIS Database
EAD Airspace Data Repository
European Union Aviation Safety Agency
European Civil Aviation Conference
Factory Acceptance Testing
Flow and Capacity Management
Flight Data Processing
Flight Management System
Free Route Airspace
Flexible Use of Airspace
General Air Traffic
Geography Markup Language
Globally Unique Identifier
Hypertext Transport Protocol
Secure HTTP
International Civil Aviation Organization
Interface Control Document
Integrated Initial Flight Plan Processing System
Information Technology Provider
Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism
Operational Air Traffic
Open Geospatial Consortium
AMC manageable Restricted Area
Recovery Point Objective
Recovery Time Objective
Search and Rescue
Site Acceptance Testing
Static and Dynamic Data (EAD)
Service Layer Agreement
Service Level Specification
Simple Object Access Protocol
System Quality Testing
System-Wide Information Management
Transport Layer Security
Uniform Resource Locator
Universally unique identifier
Virtual Private Network
Web Feature Service
Web Service Description Language
Extensible markup Language
The EAD Aerospace Data Repository (ADR) implements the Flexible Use of Airspace (FUA) data model extension which supports: AMC - manageable areas (D_AMC, R_AMC), conditional routes (CDR) and Free Route Airspace (FRA). The supported feature extensions can be found using the following link: https://aixm.aero/schema/5.1/extensions/EUR/EAD/ADR/EADADR_Features.xsd
AIXM
AFOD supports the retrieval of AIXM 5.1 features located fully or partially in a referenced airspace identified by its gml:identifier (UUID). The following spatial operators are supported: Beyond, Contains, Crosses, Disjoint, DWithin, Equals, Intersects, Overlaps, Touches and Within.
Temporal filters based on WFS-TE supporting the following temporality use cases: 3,4,6,7,8.
AFOD implements the following comparison operators: PropertyIsEqualTo, PropertyIsNotEqualTo, PropertyIsLessThan, PropertyIsGreaterThan, PropertyIsLessThanOrEqualTo, PropertyIsGreaterThanOrEqualTo, PropertyIsLike.
Logical operators are also supported but does not implement additional functions.
In case the message "HTTP ERROR 500 - Internal server error" occurs, it is possible that the query is producing an MTOM file exceeding the size limit of 750 Mb. In such case it is recommended to refine the query.
Not implemented.
Not implemented.
Not implemented.
Not implemented.
Sorting of the WFS response can be specified only within the WFS configuration. Currently, SortBy operator is not supported.
As recommended in OGC WFS Profile best practices document, EAD has constrained the CountDefault parameter to a value of 200. Consequently, all WFS requests that do not specify a value for the "count" parameter will return at most 200 results.
WFS and WFS-TE queries referring to an Airspace support the specification of a buffer area around the Airspace.
Features located fully or partially inside the buffer area are retrieved even if they are not inside the Airspace.
The buffer area is specified in nautical miles (NM) and it is mandatory to specify it, even if the value is 0 NM.
With reference to OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) Temporality Extension (OGC 12-027r3) AFOD does not implement the following use cases: Use case 1, Use case 2 and Use case 5.
The AFOD services are exposed via a technical infrastructure (AIMSL). AFOD is implemented using a standard SOAP Web Services protocol.
To avoid negative impact, when data usage is disproportionate and for extended periods, AIMSL is responsible for monitoring and limiting large amounts ____ of requests in short periods of time.
Not available to consumer.
The behaviour under normal conditions:
- for sdd-wfs service, the Data Consumer sends the WFS or WFS-TE SOAP request and expects the corresponding SOAP response; the details of accepted requests are covered by SDD XML Primer section 2.3.6.2.
- for SDDDownloadWebService, the Data Consumer requests via the EAD Service Desk the creation of parameter sets in order to define WHAT DATA should be downloaded and WHEN the download should be performed.
You can find guidance on how to build parameter sets in the Operational User Handbook - Data User, which can be found in EAD Knowledgebase.
For download jobs, using AIMSL file distribution, the user will be provided with functionality that:
* Enables an AIMSL publish/subscribe topic for every subscribed user
* Notifies subscribed users about any download job status changes and errors via the created AIMSL topic
* Creates download and log files
* Provides a SOAP endpoint, registered as AIMSL Proxy, which accepts a download identifier and returns the log and download file matching the given identifier.
* Cleans up the created files and topics after the download.
The details of accepted requests are covered by SDD XML Primer section 2.3.6.2.
All SOAP responses provide feedback of type information, warning or error depending on the execution success.
The complete list of the SOAP response feedback is available in the SDD XML Primer document, appendix 6.3 Error, info and warning messages supported by SDD.
The Query Service for AIXM 5.1 is based on the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature Service Interface Standard (WFS).
The GetCapabilities operation generates a service metadata document describing a WFS service provided by a server.
The DescribeFeatureType operation returns a schema description of feature types offered by a WFS instance.
The GetPropertyValue operation allows the value of a feature property or part of the value of a complex feature property to be retrieved from the data store for a set of features identified using a query expression.
The GetFeature operation returns a selection of features from a data store. Ref WSDL & OGC
The ListStoredQueries operation lists the stored queries available at a server.
The DescribeStoredQueries operation provides detailed metadata about each stored query expression that a server offers.
The WSDL document defines the service-specific properties of a /sdd-wfs/wfs WFS implementation; it specifies available endpoints and alternative bindings.
url:withheld
A WFS-2.0 implementation includes alternative SOAP bindings for WFS interfaces.
SWIM TI Yellow Profile specification
This request fetches exported AIXM 5.1 files, based on the defined parameter set.
Retrieves a specific download AIXM 5.1 XML file using a notifications process.
The steps of the above-mentioned process are as follows:
1. When storing a new parameter set, the system automatically creates a "topic" within AIMSL per user who is specified as "Subscriber" for the download.
2. The specified user may subscribe to the appropriate topic and recurrently poll for new status of an active download job. For subscription, the generated aimsl:id from the previously created pull point must be used.
3. The appropriate topic expression should be set as "sdd_download:<user_code_id>".
4. Once the system starts a regarding download job from the stored parameter set, every status change of the active download is notified to the topic. Possible values are QUEUED, PROCESSING, FINISHED, FAILED and CANCELLED.
5. When the status changes to FINISHED, the id of the created file is provided with the notification as the <downloadFileId>.
It is needed to request the download result via WS operation downloadAixmMessageFile - see SDD XML Primer, section 2.3.2.2 "Download Operations".
For security reasons, the addresses will be communicated only to customers.
url:withheld
The web service is bound to the SOAP messaging protocol using Document style.
SWIM TI Yellow Profile specification
Airspace - urn:aero:airm:1.0.0:LogicalModel:Subjects:AirspaceInfrastructure:Airspace:Airspace
RouteAvailability - urn:aero:airm:1.0.0:LogicalModel:Subjects:AirspaceInfrastructure:RouteAndProcedure:RouteAvailability
DesignatedPoint - urn:aero:airm:1.0.0:ConceptualModel:Subjects:AirspaceInfrastructure:InfrastructurePoint:DesignatedPoint
NAVAID - urn:aero:airm:1.0.0:LogicalModel:Subjects:BaseInfrastructure:NavigationInfrastructure:RadioNavigationService
AIRM.aero
The GML Profile for aeronautical data is limited to 2D elements and includes only the features necessary for encoding geometries of type point, line/curve and polygon/surface (outer boundaries only).
The following components of GML are out of scope for the AIXM GML Profile: Topology, Linear Referencing, Coverages.
This additional GML component necessary to the ISO 19139 (gco /basicTypes.xsd), which is imported in the GML and AIXM metadata, needs additional types. These types are not included in this profile.
This International Standard specifies the behaviour of a service that provides transactions on and access to geographic features in a manner independent of the underlying data store. It specifies discovery operations, query operations, locking operations, transaction operations and operations to manage stored parameterized query expressions.
SOAP is a messaging protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks. It uses XML Information Set for its message format, and relies on application layer protocols, most often Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), although some legacy systems communicate over Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), for message negotiation and transmission.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.
The temporality extension has been developed in order to align the OGC WFS 2.0 and FES 2.0 standards with the AIXM 5.1 Temporality Concept. It allows retrieving data in AIXM 5.1 format via OGC WFS 2.0 requests.