Towards Reengineering the United States Navy Enlister Manpower and Personnel Systems – A Data Warehouse Approach

Abstract

Historically, stove piped information systems have been developed to meet the needs of individual departments or users. Over time, attempts to increase the usefulness of these systems often involved adding layers of additional programming and data structures, resulting in complex and difficult to maintain legacy-based systems. The United States Navy enlisted personnel and manpower database system epitomizes this problem. The current system consists of several mainframe systems and a multitude of front-end systems that often require personnel managers to perform manual data extraction to execute routine activities. To illustrate the problem; we focus on Navy Enlisted Classification (NEC) reutilization, a critical aspect of the personnel assignment process. First, we present a series of contemporary database topics that form the basis for solving the problems associated with file-based legacy databases. Second, we provide details of the make-up and problems associated with the current system. Third, we develop a prototype relational data mart to prove the value of a data warehouse/data mart driven relational system. Fourth, using the prototype relational data mart as a source system, we use a contemporary OLAP application to prove the effectiveness of using a multidimensional data tool to analyze NEC reutilization. Finally, we discuss issues involving data quality and their impact on a data warehouse solution to integrating legacy systems