AuGeMMI

AuGeMMI stands for “Automatic Generation of Database Man Machine Interface from a Domain Ontology”.
The development of Satellite Reference Databases (SRDBs) has always been a critical issue for European Space Projects. The purpose of SRDBs is to capture and maintain all knowledge required for pre-launch testing of the spacecraft and its components during AIT, and operating the Spacecraft after launch.
The challenge for this type of systems is twofold:

• The system has to satisfy all stakeholders, each one with a view limited to its domain of responsibility. Stakeholders are geographically distributed and participate at different times in the project.
• The development of an SRDB takes too long (around 5 years), which is too late for certain users such as the onboard software development team who need the system available within a few months after the Phase C/D kick-off.

The solution proposed by ESA to solve those issues consists of developing the means for capturing stakeholder needs (focusing on the WHAT – semantics - rather than on the HOW) in a conceptual model, and to automate the production of the SRDBs from that conceptual model.

The FAMOUS methodology assessed by the Agency in the context of the TRP "Fact Based Modelling Unifying System" is a formal approach based on notations such as FBM and ORM for information modelling, with the objective of fully capturing all stakeholders' information needs and producing the resulting conceptual model that can be verified and validated by each stakeholder prior to any database software development.
The AuGeMMI activity has assessed how the knowledge captured by the FAMOUS methodology can be transformed into knowledge required to automate the production of any SRDB software.

As proof of concept, AuGeMMI has produced two prototypes for two different approaches:

• The Oracle AuGeMMI Framework, able to produce a web SRDB MMI based on Oracle technologies (Oracle RDBMS, ADF, JHeadStart and Forms2ADF).
• The Eclipse AuGeMMI Framework, able to produce a desktop SRDB MMI based on Eclipse technologies (EMF).

 

The two prototypes, stemming from the same conceptual model, demonstrate the possibility of automatically producing semantically rich MMIs that are closer to the stakeholder’s view of the system in comparison to other approaches that e.g. produce an MMI from an implementation model (e.g. Oracle tables).
Although these two solutions are technically different (relational and object-oriented), they are semantically equivalent from a data storage viewpoint. Data can be exchanged between the two solutions without any semantic loss, which demonstrates semantic interoperability.

AuGeMMI has involved the following participants:

ESA contract led by Serge Valera (ESTEC/TEC-SWM).

GMV (ES, J. Pacios) has acted as prime of the consortium and in charge of developing the AuGeMMI framework for Oracle.

ScopeSET (DE, M. Benkel) has acted as subcontractor in charge of developing the AuGeMMI framework for Eclipse.

PNA Group (NL, I. Lemmens and J. P. Koster) has acted as subcontractor in charge of the FBM support and development of the domain ontology.

ORM Solutions has provided support for the NORMA software and the JFE framework.