Case Study: Shape Technologies

Shape Technologies Avoids Time-Intensive Application Redevelopment With JNBridge

Situation

Shape Technologies’ Missile Warning Training Suite (MWTS) is used for operational exercises and training in missile warning and defense. Its nearly 20 applications in the MWTS allow exercise and training personnel to produce simulated messages that would be created if a real-world event occurred, providing “what if” scenario training for operators. Once the simulated messages are received, operators in training practice taking the appropriate actions and following specified procedures for each scenario.

Challenge

ShapeTech provides training for a number of operational software applications — some of which display messages on ShapeTech’s simulated globe. In most cases, the software is compatible with ShapeTech’s, which is .NET based and written in C#. However, the NASA World Wind API, a collection of components that interactively display 3-D geographic information within Java applications or applets, was an exception. A Java-based API, the NASA World Wind was incompatible with three key ShapeTech MWTS applications.

“In order to incorporate World Wind into our C# applications and be able to display 3-D information on our globe, we were faced with redeveloping all of them,” said Ken Childress, senior software engineer at ShapeTech. “We didn’t really have the capability to do that — it would take too much time and effort.”

Solution

During the course of his research to find a solution, Childress found JNBridge. He took advantage of JNBridge’s trial license, and created a prototype of ShapeTech’s C# applications. “JNBridgePro was really the only solution that was sufficient for our needs,” Childress recalled, “and our trial license with the prototype pretty much convinced us that JNBridge was the OEM partner we needed.”

Once support classes were developed, Childress said JNBridgePro did the rest, making it look like Java is in C#, or vice versa. “It has really made the interface to the NASA World Wind seamless. It just works great,” he said.

According to Childress, JNBridge support is top-notch as well. “Support’s been very good; [JNBridge] has always been very responsive in pointing us in the right direction to finding solutions to any issues. In some cases, they’ve even made fixes on their end to help solve our problems.”

Benefits

• Ensures seamless experience bridging .NET and Java
• Provides cost-effective alternative to redeveloping incompatible applications
• Allows developers to shift focus to other pertinent tasks

Get Started

To solve the complex problem of Java and .NET interoperability in your organization, download a free trial copy of JNBridgePro from www.jnbridge.com.