Software development for the material science laboratory on ISS by automated generation of real-time software from datasheet-based inputs

摘要

To meet the techical and managerial challanges of the MSL project it became necessary to find a highly efficient and flexible software development approach. This paper describes this generic approach chosen for MSL software development and the benefits gained by using tools for automatic software generation to an utmost extent. The outputs of the system engineering tasks as e.g.g data input - output relations, control commands and software architectural design are maintained in data sheets. With software tools like the ISG from these data sheets the infrastructure and other important parts (e.g., command dispatcher and database) of the software ystem are automatically generated. This enables the software development team to put emphasis on the development of the lower levle, project specific functionality. Changes are performed by updating the datasheets and rerunning the generation.