Theater Construction Management System.

摘要

In September 2002, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) challenged the Army Facilities Component System (AFCS) branch of the USACE Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, Alabama, to overhaul the planning and design tool called Theater Construction Management System (TCMS) version 1.2E. The Huntsville AFCS team released TCMS version 2.0 on 1 December 2003. This release is a complete overhaul of the TCMS structure and the underlying AFCS database, making version 1.2E obsolete and incompatible with version 2.0. The significance of this overhaul relies on the knowledge of the underlying technology. The Construction Engineering Research Laboratory developed the early programming for TCMS more than 20 years ago to access the existing AFCS digital database. That version of the program was based on a Microsoft(registered) disk operated system that used external drives and was limited by floppy disks and hard drive space. The AFCS branch added functions and interface options within the 16-bit Microsoft Windows(registered) operating system. However, each change was an add-on instead of an integrated, planned programming adjustment. This created an unstable operating environment and limited the enhancements that users needed. TCMS stayed 16-bit-based until 2003, even though 32-bit programming was introduced in 1995. This meant that version 1.2E and earlier versions of TCMS are limited to old and outdated commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, while the overhauled version 2.0 can interface with the latest version of Microsoft Project and AutoCAD(registered) and run on a native Microsoft Windows XP environment. This lets users take advantage of current COTS.