The XTCE Toolkit provides both a native Java library and a Graphical User Interface, based on that library, to support the OMG XML Telemetric and Command Exchange (XTCE) standard.
The toolkit does not depend on any graphical interfaces. Further, the graphical user interface "xtceview" contains little to no business logic, preferring to be a graphical wrapper around the toolkit package. To supplement this, a number of examples, sample databases, and schema documentation are also included.
The XTCE Toolkit project supports the user community of the XTCE specification by attempting to:
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Provide a program and platform independent viewer/editor for satellite databases stored in XTCE format. Visualization of large XML data sets is a struggle without the assistance of a higher level tool.
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Provide an API that is relatively easy to use, with a minimum of training, and does not otherwise require understanding of all of the internal complexity of the XTCE specification. The specification is very complex, which makes it powerful enough to represent any program, but non quick or easy to use for programmers.
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Provide a means to validate and/or "cross check" other satellite C2 systems and tools by providing an internal encoder/decoder to enable round trip conversion of Telemetry, Telecommand, Table, and various forms of Log or Buffer data, when represented in the XTCE data model.
This project is primarily aimed at supporting the XTCE 1.2 specification that has yet to be released by the Object Management Group Space Domain Task Force. XTCE XML documents that are compliant with the existing 1.1 specification will work with this library in many cases, although some intervention may be required on elements which are known to have spelling errors. Enabling validation on the XML will report the issues, should any exist during document loading.
The longer term strategy planned at present is to have this library/ui toolkit automatically migrate XTCE 1.1 documents to XTCE 1.2 documents during the loading process when the XTCE 1.2 specification is finalized.
- Supported by the author and tested regularly on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS/X, and Windows platforms.
- Static Analysis by Coverity Scan for Open Source
- Telemetry Parameter access without needing to understand the XTCE data model, relationships, references, or other complexities.
- Similar Telecommand and Argument access without needing to understand the XTCE data model.
- Telemetry and Telecommand Container/Packet processing supporting most of the XTCE schema complexity, reducing the output access to simple flattened accessors such that the user need not understand or be aware of the complexities of the XTCE data model.
- Extremely fast optimized searches for Parameters, Telecommands, and usage of Parameters in Containers/Packets.
- Support for Streams and ability to link from Streams to specific Containers/Packets.
- Ability to export from XTCE to other common formats, such as CSV, for use in a spreadsheet.
- Regression tested using Java standard JUnit 4 classes.
- The toolkit and GUI are both conceived with idea of editing as well as viewing in mind, although the edit features are only minimally complete.
- Round trip loading and saving operations while preserving comments and formatting.
- The toolkit and GUI have both been proven on programs that utilize both CCSDS Space Data Link and European ECSS Packet Utilization (PUS) standards.
- The toolkit and GUI are regularly used with satellite databases that incorporate XInclude and in total are hundreds of megabytes in size. Performance was a strong consideration in the design.
- I18/L10 Internationalization with support currently installed for both US English and European French languages.
- An internal encoder and decoder for Parameters and Arguments that can serve as a reference for other implementations of commutation and de-commutation capabilities.
- XTCE 1.2 Release Candidate Schema support.
The JAR file contains both the library and the graphical interface application.
It is self-executable with Java 7 or later. In the event that Java 7 is used,
then the user will need to ensure that jfxrt.jar is on the CLASSPATH. This
is used for the Help Menus, which may be the first capabilities desired.
Example launch scripts with Windows (.bat) and Unix (.sh) are provided in the
root of the source package.
A comprehensive API description in Javadoc is included in the JAR file and can also be conveniently browsed from the Help Menu on the user interface under the "On Toolkit API" Menu Item.
Example Satellite Databases are included for testing/browsing/evaluation and are built-in. Select those from the graphical interface File Menu under the item "Open Example Database". The database named "BogusSAT-2" is a good place to start.
Note that the "BogusSAT-2" example has some deliberate schema errors inside. This is part of the unit testing. Later this will be refactored to isolate those to the unit test databases also inside the package but not on the example list in the menu.
The following image is a snapshot of the main user interface screen showing a possible example representation of a CCSDS TM (Telemetry) Space Packet header.
This project can be built using Java 8 or 11 using the Maven build system.
The build system is based on Maven and the project can be imported in NetBeans or Eclipse. Dependencies are resolved by Maven and no customization is required.
The project can be built manually using Maven:
mvn package
There are 4 Java JAR files emitted from the package goal. The file named xtcetools-version.jar contains everything. The file xtcetools-version-library.jar contains only the toolkit library without the UI package. In addition, a javadoc and sources set of jars is provided for supporting IDEs. A "FAT JAR" is also assembled if needed by the user.
The JaCoCo Java Code Coverage report is only scoped to the library portion and can be found after the build in target/site/jacoco/index.html
Java 8
The jar containing the UI is self-executable and may be launched simply:
java -jar target/xtcetools-1.1.5.jar
If you choose to use Maven automatic downloads, the xtcetools package can be declared in a pom.xml as a dependency without the need to download and build the source here.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.xtce</groupId>
<artifactId>xtcetools</artifactId>
<version>1.1.5</version>
</dependency>
The initial author of this software is an active member of the Task Force that maintains the XTCE specification.
If this project interests you, perhaps these other projects that interest the author would also be of interest to you.
- Comprehensive Open-architecture Solution for Mission Operations Systems (COSMOS)
- Hummingbird
- Yet Another Mission Control System (YAMCS)
- NASA CFS Command and Data Dictionary Tool (CCDDT)
The author is aware of XTCE implementations provided by commercial spacecraft command and control vendors. This list will be updated as the author is made aware of any additional implementations that are tested and deployed to the marketplace. For each of these two products, the author has significant experience integrating and using the offerings. Using this open source XTCE toolkit and these products can assure a rapid integration of a spacecraft TT&C database.