With arrival of OB7.1 and DS decommissioning, it was decided not to port the IFPS applications, ifpServerWatcher and avn_unldr to use Postgres database resources. These two applications have been retired with OB7.1 and future builds. Their job was to monitor GFESuite's ifpServer for changes in the gridded database, and when notified of such changes, extract gridded data and place it in a format accessable to AvnFPS data ingest server. In their stead, a new GFE text formatter was created to do the job of accessing IFPS gridded database and writing the information to the /data/adapt/avnfps/grids directory.

The new GFE text formatter, IFPS2AvnFPS.py is run at least 10 times an hour via cron on the px2f machine. The only requirement for the new text formatter to run is that all TAFs must have a GFE edit area defined in the ifpServer database. We are working to remove this restriction in a later build. Fortunately, offices that have configured IFPS to send gridded data to AvnFPS most likely have already satisfied this requirement, so no additional work is required.

With IFPS software, the process of getting gridded data into AvnFPS was event-driven: triggered when a forecaster saved aviation-related parms in GFE. That has been replaced by scheduled-driven process using "fxa" cron. Ultimately, this new technique should be event-driven as well. This enhancement is planned for ifpServer.