Theme: Evolution of software development and management
A model-based Software Architecture Approach for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is planned as the first ground-based observatory for gamma-ray astronomy at very-high energies, open to the world-wide astronomy and physics community. The CTA observatory will have two telescope array sites, one in the Southern hemisphere in the Atacama Desert in Chile and one in the Northern hemisphere on the island of La Palma in Spain, with up to 100 (40) telescopes. The CTA observatory will be centrally operated from the CTA Headquarters in Bologna (Italy) and the Science Data Management Centre in Zeuthen (Germany). Well-designed and high-quality software systems are needed to ensure an efficient operation across all observatory sites, an optimized scientific exploitation of the CTA data products and an excellent support of the CTA user community. In this contribution, we provide an overview on how we use a model-based architecture approach at the basis of the CTA software development and project management. We will discuss a formal methodology based on SysML and UML notation that allows us to build an integration architecture, tailored for CTA to capture the interactions of stakeholders with the software systems and the processes and activities they perform. We will show how their functionality is decomposed into individual software systems, in relationship with the requirements, and how the architecture model provides context and specification to the individual software systems. Finally, the benefits of the model-based architecture for enhancing project organisation and software development will be discussed.
