SHIP uses San Mateo, California-based Composite Software Inc.'s EII server to quickly integrate data housed in different formats in various back-end data sources, he said.

"The files could be in ASCII format, in various legacy formats, and they could be binary or XML-based," said Mak.

The Composite Information Server takes the data from the various sources and formats and builds "virtual views" that can be used to diagnose and analyze space station problems, he said. By accessing multiple data sources, Mak added, "we can do joins and comparisons -- things people used to do by cutting and pasting data into spreadsheets."

Rick Alena is a computer engineer in the intelligent systems division at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and leader of the SHIP development team. He noted that EII technology helps mission controllers aggregate large amounts of information and cross-reference that data with other sources

"As you analyze events and go into problem resolution, you find cases or examples of similar types of events and use those to help guide you," Alena said. "[SHIP] is simply a way of allowing people to make diagnoses and institute the required recovery rather quickly."