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PolarSys Improvements/Kitalpha 2013
Kitalpha was initialized by Thales and is supported by the French sys2Soft and European Crystal projects.
Contents
Purpose of Kitalpha
Kitalpha is a workbench to develop and execute MBE (Model-Based Engineering) workbenches, where an MBE workbench is an integrated tool to develop systems in System / Software Engineering.
Kitalpha conforms to the ISO/IEC-42010 standard, which is a standard for Architecture Description in System and Software Engineering. Systems are described by viewpoints (e.g., performance, safety, mass, price) for separation of concerns which are aggregated in an architecture framework.
Figure 1. System architecture description by viewpoints
MBE Workbench
An MBE Workbench is internally composed of viewpoints in order to describe the common features of a system architecture. For instance, a system is described and refined at different levels of abstraction (e.g., logical / physical architecture). An MBE Worbench can be dynamically enriched by viewpoints, each one corresponding to an engineering specialty (e.g., performance, safety).
An MBE Workbench is an integrated tool enriched with capabilities such as import / export, validation, transformation.
Figure 2. Structure of an MBE Workbench
Architectural position of Kitalpha
The following picture shows the position of Kitalpha:
1. At the top, a system architecture is described by viewpoints [Level 1].
2. An MBE Worbench enables to describe system architecture [Level 2].
3. Kitalpha is a workench which enables to develop MBE Workbenches [Level 3].
4. Kitalpha uses Eclipse components.
Figure 3. Position of Kitalpha
At an engineering level, Kitalpha is composed of components and services to develop and execute MBE Worbenches.
At the technology level, Kitalpha is composed of core technology components and frameworks for engineering needs which are not available in Eclipse.
Roadmap of Kitalpha
The temptative roadmap of Kitalpha is the following:
1. Dec. 2013: Proposal
2. Mid-January 2014: Creation review
3. End of January 2014: Initial submission
4. March 2014: Kitalpha 0.2 release
5. June 2014: Kitalpha 0.3 release