AuGeMMI

Automatic generation of database human-machine interface from a domain ontology, as part of the FAMOUS activities promoted by the ESA.

AuGeMMI stands for “automatic generation of database human-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 collection and preserve all know-how required for pre-launch testing of the spacecraft and its components during AIT and operating the spacecraft after launch.
There are two challenges for this type of system:

• The system needs to satisfy all stakeholders, each with a view limited to their area of responsibility. Stakeholders are geographically distributed and participate at different times in the project.
• It takes too long to develop an SRDB (around 5 years), which is too long for certain users, such as the onboard software development team, which needs the system available within a few months after the start of C/D.

The solution proposed by ESA to solve those issues is to develop the means to fulfill stakeholders’ needs (focusing on the WHAT – semantics – rather than on the HOW) with a conceptual model, and automate the production of the SRDBs based on that model.

The Methodology 

The FAMOUS methodology established by the Agency in the context of the TRP "Fact-Based Modeling Unifying System" is a formal approach based on notations such as FBM and ORM for information modeling to completely fulfill all stakeholders’ needs and produce a conceptual model that can be verified and validated by each stakeholder prior to any database software development.

The AuGeMMI activity has established how the knowledge captured by the FAMOUS methodology can be transformed into the knowledge required to automate the production of any SRDB software.
 

 

Two prototypes, two different approaches

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 than other approaches that, for example, produce an MMI from an implementation model (e.g. Oracle tables).

Although these two solutions are technically different (one relational and the other 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.