Synoptic: a domain specific modeling language for embedded flight-software

In collaboration with major European manufacturers, the SPaCIFY project aims at bringing advances in MDE to the satellite flight software industry. It focuses on software development and maintenance phases of satellite lifecycle. The project advocates a top-down approach built on a Domain-Specific Modeling Language (DSML) named Synoptic. The aim of Synoptic is to support all aspects of embedded flight-software design. As such, Synoptic consists of heterogeneous modeling and programming principles defined in collaboration with the industrial partners and end users of the SPaCIFY project. Used as the central modeling language of the SPaCIFY model driven engineering process, Synoptic allows to describe different layers of abstraction: at the highest level, the software architecture models the functional decomposition of the flight software. This is mapped to a dynamic architecture which defines the thread structure of the software. It consists of a set of threads, where each thread is characterized by properties such as its frequency, its priority and its activation pattern (periodic, sporadic).