Re: Jeppesen database

[dab@froghouse.org]

On 25 Mar, John Peterson wrote:

>    Very interesting. I must say I'm really quite surprised that they
> take such an "open" attitude towards reading the data. Not a slam on
> Jeppesen in any way, but it seems like every company on earth has
> tried to restrict the use of their products in every *possible*
> legal and technical way (Win Printers and Win Modems for example, to
> these companies the concept of "fair use" means "no use). Very
> refreshing really...

It shouldn't be surprising.  It's certainly in Jeppesen's interest to
help people be able to use their data; they make money by selling that
data.  The more companies who sell devices that use Jepp data, the
more customers Jepp has.  Now they don't give this stuff away and they
don't give you a sample database that's useful for anything.  It just
has some of every record type so you can test your parsing software.
We asked about getting a complete, out of date copy of their data so
we could make sure our data structures and so forth were up to the
task and they got a lot more cagey though it wasn't totally out of the
question.

The idea of preventing people from using your product by keeping
technical information secret is just daft.  I know companies do it all
the time; it's still bonkers.

Jeppesen has a de-facto monopoly on reliable aviation nav data.  There
is no other source as the FAA data is supposed to be riddled with
errors.  They can best keep their position by making sure there's no
reason to create any competition so they make sure any who want can
use their data.  At a price of course.

> As far as conversion software goes, I wrote avdbtools (the package
> used to create the fplan databases) in plain ol' C. I know people
> have their favorites, but C worked just fine. The bulk of it came
> together in just a couple evenings.

The Jepp data is in a bit more complex format I suspect.  Maybe I'm
just slow but in the couple of evening's work I've put in so far I've
only gotten a tiny ways into the formats.  I can partially parse the
VOR records.  The ARINC 424 spec is some 250 pages (and not the
clearest writing I've ever encountered) plus maybe another 40 pages of
Jeppesen extensions.

 -Dave


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