SP RUSLAN was designed at term from 1995 to 1999 as final release of a number of application packages for support of process of technical exploitation of aircraft in the airlines of former USSR, Cuba and Poland.

First of this series (for 1968 - 1978) were the batch systems SP TOS, SP TOS-R. They are used more than in 20 largest airlines, including airports "Vnukovo", "Sheremetyevo", "Domodedovo","Pulkovo", airports of cities Rostov-on-Don, Minsk, Tashkent, the airline "Cubana de Aviacion" in Havana.

The next stage in development (for 1980 - 1988) included interactive systems SP ATB-1, SP ATB-2, SP EAT, which were installed in many airports. The listed systems received high government estimation - The State premium of the Council of Ministers of USSR for 1990.

The packages "LOTOS-1" (1990) and "LOTOS-2" (1993), developed for the airline "LOT" (Warsaw, Poland), inherited the best features of previous releases. They took into account the technological requirements of exploitation of modern aviation equipment (BOEING, ATR, A-300) and experience of foreign computer systems - MAXI MERLIN (US AIR), SCEPTRE SYSTEM (AIR LINGUS, DUBLIN AIRPORT), DANIEL (USA), SILICON (CANADA).

SP RUSLAN is intended for automation of data support of the process of technical exploitation of aviation equipment. 

Therefore SP RUSLAN users are the specialists of aircraft depot of airlines and also broad audience of persons by and large bound up with organization of usage of aircraft fleet - flights scheduling department, finance department, cargo services. 

SP RUSLAN has no limitations on used types of aircraft (domestic and foreign production) and allows organizing all kinds of account for any number of components for each type of aircraft. The features of a certain airline are being set up by program parameters on the subject of installation.

SP RUSLAN is designed as a multi-level system of modular architecture. SP RUSLAN includes a number of independent automated systems (AS) - see figure below, which are compatible in structure and contents of data and operate in unified information and computation medium. For the entire SP RUSLAN the unified technology of development, maintenance and installation is used. 

AS "Equipment" is intended for automation of account and control of resource status of an airplane, engines, auxiliary power plants and aggregates, registration of their movement and changes of service conditions.
AS "Equipment" includes 8 modules and provides the possibility to control the database and to show resource statuses of the airplane, engines and aggregates.

AS "Control" is intended for automation of functions of account of service conditions, analysis and control of usage of the aircraft fleet. 
AS "Control" provides the following possibilities:
· analyzing data about scheduling of departures and statuses of aircraft; 
· collecting data about usage of aircraft in different temporary and information aspects;
· preparing data about exploitation of aircraft pursuant to the forms 34, 36 and 37 ( required by the State committee on statistics of Russian Federation for Civil aviation).
AS "Control" includes 7 modules.

AS* "Maintenance" (under development now) is intended for automation of operations of planning, assigning, logging and controlling in technical maintenance of aircraft, including assignment and account of execution of additional works.
Besides AS "Maintenance" performs the functions of cataloging and execution control of documents, received by the airline or issued independently, related with structure and semantics of information and organization of technical maintenance.

AS "Reliability" is intended for processing data about failures and malfunctions of airplanes, engines, auxiliary power plants and aggregates. The system provides facilities for reliability analysis of the work of aviation equipment in different aspects - for groups of equipment, for codes ATA - 100, for different types of aircraft and a separate aircraft. Besides AS "Reliability" calculates reliability indices for different periods of time, prepares data to submit to the structures of state supervision for the air safety. The functions of the system are implemented in 7 modules.

AS "Planning" supports preparation of the schedules of aircraft usage; analysis and control of requirements of the rules of aircraft maintenance. AS "Planning" allows forming the long-term and operative schedules of using the aircraft fleet. The problems of planning are being solved by means of imitative statistical models of process of technical exploitation of aircraft. These algorithms optimize the schedules of aircraft usage in different temporary slices with sets of different conditions, where the problem of planning is being solved by multi-criteria method in terms of general scheduling theory.

AS "Material and Technical Supplies" (AS MTO) automates storage accounting, informs about receipt, consumption and availability of supplies in the airline, watches the level of not reducing reserve, compiles an annual requirement. For more details click here...

AS "Add-ons" is intended for processing data about add-ons (assigned, executed and not executed) for a certain aircraft and aircraft type as a whole.
The system contains data for the whole period of exploitation of each aircraft of the airline.

The module "System" is intended for installation of SP RUSLAN on a certain subject and creation of reference sections of DB, containing characteristics of the company and other normative data. 

Today SP RUSLAN operates in JSC AEROFLOT on IBM9672. RA-5, ADABAS v.6.3, NATURAL v.2.3, OS/390,  in "Ural Airlines" on computer COMPAREX. In the airline LOT the system LOTOS (the clone of SP RUSLAN designed for a Polish airline) operates on IBM - S/390 in medium ADABAS v.6.3, NATURAL v.2.3, OS/390, i.e. practically on current versions of software products of the companies SOFTWARE AG and IBM.

So, for installation of SP RUSLAN functions the selection of mainframe as the center of data processing is mostly important. Accordingly the application software is oriented on usage of CRT terminals at workstations and, therefore, restricted set of graphical means. In conditions of repeated execution of operations of updating the DB the restricted graphic capabilities of CRT terminals are not severe lacks from the point of view of ergonomics. At the same time lacks of the mentioned displays become apparent at obtaining the information in color graphic forms, and also at opening-up the printed reporting at workstations. 

SP RUSLAN, basing on the software of corporation SOFTWARE AG, uses PC workstations of LAN. For such workstations is provided:
· possibility of working with transactions of SP RUSLAN;
· printing the documents, generated in the system, at printers, connected to PC ports;
· processing data from SP RUSLAN by means of PC for obtaining colored graphic pictures;
· connection with systems operating on PC for transfer to / obtaining from them the indispensable data. 

Providing the listed capabilities should be considered as the first step on paths to implement interfaces in client / server architecture for the SP RUSLAN users.
The process of SP RUSLAN installation includes several steps. At the first step the operating system, the system of teleprocessing, package of tool software and DBMS must be generated. Then the installation of three base subsystems AS "Equipment", AS "Control" and module "System" must be executed. At the end the remaining automated systems AS "Maintenance", AS "Reliability", AS "Planning", AS MTO must be installed.
SP RUSLAN is designed in such a manner that allows maintaining up to 15 airlines and their branches in one data-processing center. SP RUSLAN is a developing software product, its functional capabilities permanently expand, and also is being raised the level of information tools. 

At present the following tasks are being solved:

• a number of economic tasks;
• organization of distributed processing of data received from SITA and AFTN channels;
• including into SP RUSLAN medium workstations of users from different airline services ;
• control of aircraft maintenance at airport apron;
• improvement of users' interfaces on the basis of programmatic components tendered by corporation SOFTWARE AG.

In summary it is necessary to mark, that SP RUSLAN is an effective tool of control of exploitation of aircraft fleet. Software, used by SP RUSLAN, provides modern airlines practically unlimited capabilities in escalating amount of processed data, usage of remote processing, dilating of the system functional structure and its "openness" for interplay with other software used in the airlines. The DBMS ADABAS is effectively used for processing large data arrays, and also for plenty of simultaneously working users. ADABAS is designed and optimized so that to provide maximum performance for applications of critical importance, using rather small computing resources. SP RUSLAN, designed in NATURAL, is easily scaled and exported on to other platforms, because ADABAS and NATURAL are compatible with all basic computing platforms. Pursuant to policy "ADABAS and NATURAL forever" SOFTWARE AG continues to develop these products, providing their integration to the modern Internet technologies.

Today there are SP RUSLAN versions, functioning in the medium of operational systems OS/390, LINUX, Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows XP.

The last achievements in rendering informational services for support of technical exploitation of aircraft fleet are based on ASP-technology, which makes it possible to reduce expenditures of airlines on purchase and exploitation of expensive software product in many times and, therefore, to increase considerably the efficiency of its usage.

At present SP RUSLAN is being exploited in the URAL AIRLINES, AEROFLOT, PERM AIRLINES in Russia and in the airline LOT (Warsaw, Poland).