© ASTRON
The twenty-five participants included representatives from several SKA consortia and the SKA Office. ASTRON was present with two people working in the Science Data Processor and Central Signal Processor consortia.
The backbone of the workshop consisted of tutorials given by two instructors from the Software Engineering Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University (SEI). After the lectures, the theoretical knowledge was put into practice. The participants developed so-called mission threads, worked on quality attribute scenarios and documented parts of the SKA using various views. An important aspect of the work was integrating the knowledge scattered across the various consortia into a system-level view of the SKA. A lot of open architectural questions were identified during the process which will need to be addressed in the near future.
As a follow-up, the consortium designing the Science Data Processor, which is one of the most software-intensive parts of the SKA, is organising a similar SEI workshop for its members. The newly acquired knowledge will be put to the test during the preparation of the SKA Critical Design Review documentation which needs to follow the SEI guidelines.