SI Reconfiguration Home Page

 

The SI Reconfiguration element of SPSS provides crucial scheduling of science instrument and detector configuration transitions both relative to a single instrument and across multiple instruments. This scheduling activity is driven by the population of a number of pmdb database tables (wsi tables) and an alignment level table (qasi_states). SI Reconfiguration is an area of risk as it consists of a complex set of requirements, a very old codebase (developed by TRW), and outdated user documentation on the setting of driving pmdb tables. In addition, the SI Reconfiguration tables are used to produce work-arounds for some of the instrument SAA problems. At present, there is a risk that potential problems within this area could not be addressed without considerable time and effort.

 
To minimize the risk of such an event occurring, SDT is initiating a SI Reconfiguration Documentation project. The primary purposes of this project is to document those SI Reconfiguration functions that are available today, provide an updated regression test suite for all SI functions, and enable SDT staff to familiarize themselves with the codebase.

Three major areas of work:

1) Requirements review and User's guide clean up

The existing requirements document for SI Recon is the original TRW specifications. This document will need to be recovered and moved into electronic form and then modified as functionality is verified. The current user documentation on the population of SI Reconfiguration tables will need to be updated and should include descriptions of the kludges that have been created.

2) Test suite upgrade

The existing test suite will be reviewed for its completeness to verify existing SI Reconfiguration functionality. The current test plan and test suite will be upgraded to verify all SI Reconfiguration functions. This will require the production of one or more dummy instruments. Once completed, the test results will be reviewed and analyzed to identify any functionality not working within the SI Reconfiguration system. A test report will be produced to document these results.

3) Code review and clean up

Selected SDT software developers will carry out a review of the SI Reconfiguration code. As part of this review, the developers will add any appropriate documentation to improve later investigations. SDT developers may implement some of the outstanding SI Reconfiguration OPRs or file and fix OPRs based on their code review. The purpose of these modifications is not to make substantial changes in the functionality of the SI Reconfiguration software, but to strengthen the code review process.

Project Plan User's Guide
Requirments Document Test Plans
Test Results
Schedule
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Last Updated: 8 August, 2001