SADAS: an integrated software system for the data of the SuperAGILE experiment

SuperAGILE (SA) is a detection system on board of the AGILE satellite (Astrorivelatore Gamma a Immagini LEggero), a Gamma-ray astronomy mission approved by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) as first project for the Program for Small Scientific Missions, with launch planned in the second part of 2005. The developing and testing of the instrument took a big effort in software building and applications, we realized an integrated system to handle and to analyse measurement data since prototype tests until flight observations. The software system was created with an Object Oriented software design approach, and this permits to employ suitable libraries developed by other research teams and the integration of applications developed during our past work. This method allowed us to apply our schemas and written code on several prototypes, to share the work among different developers with the help of standard modeling instruments such as UML schemas. We also used SQL-based database techniques to access large amounts of data stored in the archives, this will improve the scientific return from space observations. All this has allowed our team to minimize the cost of developing in terms of man-power and resources, to dispone of a flexible system to face future needs of the mission and to invest it on other experiments.