This document describes Eclipse, a modular software toolset called Eclipse being developed by Sapienza Consulting to support product assurance, quality assurance, and project management processes for the European space industry. Eclipse integrates existing Sapienza tools and aims to be affordable, standardized, secure, and compliant with European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) standards. It includes modules for document management, reviews, action items, and more. The goal is for Eclipse to become the de facto standard toolset for managing space projects across Europe.

1. ECLIPSE, AN EMERGING, STANDARDIZED, MODULAR, SECURE AND AFFORDABLE SOFTWARE
TOOLSET IN SUPPORT OF PRODUCT ASSURANCE, QUALITY ASSURANCE AND PROJECT
MANAGEMENT FOR THE ENTIRE EUROPEAN SPACE INDUSTRY (FROM INNOVATIVE SMES TO
PRIMES AND INSTITUTIONS)
Andrea Bennetti (1)
, Salim Ansari (2)
, Tori Dewhirst (1)
, Giuseppe Catanese (1)
(1)
Affiliation Sapienza Consulting ltd., 5 Birtley Courtyard, Birtley Road, Bramley, Surrey GU5 0LA (UK),
Email: andrea.bennetti@sapienzaconsulting.com ,
(2)
Affiliation, European Space Agency, European Space Research & Technology Centre
Keplerlaan Postbus 299 2200 AG Noordwijk (The Netherlands), Email: Salim.ansari@esa.int
1. ABSTRACT
The development of satellites and ground systems
(and the technologies that support them) is complex
and demands a great deal of rigor in the
management of both the information it relies upon
and the information it generates via the
performance of well established processes.
To this extent for the past fifteen years Sapienza
Consulting has been supporting the European
Space Agency (ESA) in the management of this
information and provided ESA with ECSS
(European Cooperation for Space Standardization)
Standards based Project Management (PM),
Product Assurance (PA) and Quality Assurance
(QA) software applications.
In 2009 Sapienza recognised the need to
modernize, standardizing and integrate its core
ECSS-based software tools into a single yet
modularised suite of applications named ECLIPSE
aimed at:
• Fulfilling a wider range of historical and
emerging requirements,
• Providing a better experience for users,
• Increasing the value of the information it
collects and manages
• Lowering the cost of ownership and operation
• Increasing collaboration within and between
space sector organizations
• Aiding in the performance of several PM, PA,
QA, and configuration management tasks in
adherence to ECSS standards.
In this paper, Sapienza will first present the toolset,
and a rationale for its development, describing and
justifying its architecture, and basic modules
composition. Having defined the toolset
architecture, this paper will address the current
status of the individual applications. A compliance
assessment will be presented for each module in
the toolset with respect to the ECSS standard it
addresses. Lastly experience from early industry
and Institutional users will be presented.
2. INTRODUCTION
Over the past fifteen years Sapienza’s software
solutions have delivered support to over 20 ESA-
led space missions and projects including but not
limited to: Mars Express, Rosetta, Herschel,
Planck, Exomars, Columbus, ATV, Galileo, and
Earth Observation missions: ENVISAT, GOCE,
SMOS and Vega.
The overarching goal of these software applications
is to automate and help standardize (wherever
possible) those core processes associated to PM,
PA, and QA activities which are relevant and
common in most space projects (from development
through to operational phases).
For example these applications assisted ESA and
its industrial partners in the management, storage
and sharing of project documentation, the
assessment and management of non-conformances,
the performance of formal project reviews (CDR,
PDR, ORR etc), the verification and tracking of
requirements compliance, and more generally in
the management of information and knowledge
within a space project.
An historical account (from November 2000 ESA
bulletin 104) of this contribution can be found in
the paper “New concepts in Document
Management for Space Projects” that describes
how the ESA Science directorate led the way in
modernizing the Space Project Management
activities by developing and using an electronic
Document Management System (developed by
Sapienza Consulting) that is still successfully
operated today as part of the ESA PRISMA

2. (Project Reporting Information System for
Management and Administration) suite of software
applications (also developed by Sapienza).
3. ECLIPSE AS A TOOLSET FOR
THE WHOLE SPACE SECTOR
Historically, Sapienza-developed software
applications were born and developed to fulfil the
specific needs of ESA. This effort has over the
years resulted in a collection of highly specialized
web-based collaborative software applications,
each addressing the whole, or in some cases
portions, of a key ESA, PA, QA or PM process.
The adoption of these applications by the ESA’s
industrial partners has been steadily growing, as
ESA projects chose applications like the RID
(Review Item of Discrepancy system) and the
NCTS (Non-Conformance Tracking System) as the
de-facto standards. Nevertheless industry
(especially non-primes) has, until recently, had
relatively low interest in adopting these
applications for the management of their own
internal operations and projects.
An investigation completed by Sapienza in 2009
revealed that one of the major barriers to a wider
adoption of the applications was the cost of the
necessary system infrastructure (software and
hardware) which in most SMEs is not present and
warranted by other business needs. Other findings
revealed that a greater integration of the
applications was sought in order to reduce the
transactional (number of operations) and
administrative cost of operating several distinct
applications.
As a result of the investigation Sapienza Consulting
reviewed its software product development strategy
eventually resulting in the development of the
ECLIPSE suite, that now promises to provide the
European Sector with a strong candidate for a de-
facto PA, QA and PM, ECSS-process-based
software toolset that would be affordable by SMEs
as well as large organizations.
This toolset can replace spreadsheets and low-end
databases in performing and controlling critical
processes (with a need for full record and bi-
directional trace ability retention), while adding
security and the “collaborative” and “real time”
aspect to the space project management
environment.
Furthermore this toolset can function as a vertical
integration agent in the space project supply chain
(integrating the Institution to the prime, all the way
down to the system suppliers), by increasing
visibility and awareness between the parties whilst
also standardizing key processes in a software
controlled environment.
The new guidelines for Sapienza software products
development, drawn in 2009, reflect our ambition
to provide such a toolset to the European space
sector over the coming years. To achieve our goal
ECLIPSE has been designed to
• Be aligned to the ECSS Standards
Have a low cost of ownership and operation
Be agnostic to commercial platforms
Be scalable, (to fit various deployment
scenarios as size of data/users increases)
Be reliable (to support mission-critical
activities)
Be comprehensive, covering a valuable sized
cluster of related ECSS requirements for PA,
QA and PM
Be modular
Be integrated (limiting repetition of non-value
adding operations as far as possible)
Be extendable
Be customisable but retaining processes
integrity
Be collaborative
Be secure
Be easy to use
4. ECLIPSE SPACE BUSINESS
MODULES (STATUS AND
ROADMAP)
The ECLIPSE toolset currently includes the
following modules (or space applications):
DCCM (Document Configuration and Change
Management)
RID (Review Item of Discrepancy) system for
the performance of formal space projects
reviews by distributed teams
AIM (Action Items Management)
Three further modules have currently been
identified and are planned to be integrated in future
releases of the toolset:
NCTS (Non Conformance Tracking System)
RISK management module (known as
ARAMIS, currently in use by the ESA Galileo
project)
VCS (Verification Control System) for the
management and creation of requirements
compliance matrices

3. EKD (Engineering Knowledge Database) a
highly customisable database for managing
engineering product data
ECLIPSE integrates the individual modules (i.e.
DCCM or AIM or any other) in a common
Software Project Environment.
This approach provides several benefits to the
system users:
• It allows a coherent navigation of all the
relevant project applications within the same
project environment
• It automatically generates bi-directional and
auditable data records
• It provides manageable workflows and enables
logical links to be built (searched and
displayed) between appropriate business
objects. For example documents can be created
and managed in DCCM, than exposed to the
RID system for their review by disperse teams
across the vertical supply chain. This is just
one example of how the modules in ECLIPSE
work together.
Figure 1 –ECLIPSE Integration and interoperability
concept
Figure 2 –ECLIPSE integrated environment User
Interface
5. SYSTEM VISION
From an architectural point of view the ECLIPSE
suite has been designed as a combination of
multiple layers and modules stacked on top of a
document repository. The high level architecture
can be divided into three different categories of
system elements:
• Applications: modules that implement the
specific business process (Fig 3 grey boxes).
• Services (Fig 3 yellow boxes): essential
functions supporting the applications.
• Utilities: libraries and tools (not shown in Fig
3).
Figure 3 – System Vision
All information managed by ECLIPSE is stored
within the Document Repository (file system or an
external Software Content Repository) and the
Metadata Repository (relational database for the
document attributes and all other records in the
system).
The Core Services implement the essential
functionality at the heart of the system (security,
workflow engine, auditing).
The User Repository (JAIL) is responsible for the
management of all users and organisations
involved in the ECLIPSE project/s.
The “Space Applications”, namely DCCM, RID,
AIM, (eventually NCTS etc.), implement the
business processes and provide the users with the
relevant functionality and data according to the
predefined business rules and security schemes.
5.1 Key features
The key features of the resulting architecture are:
• Layered modular structure combining and
composing services that support transversally
the various applications.

4. • Loosely coupled components whose
interactions are governed by predefined
interfaces. Being self-contained each
component can be tailored to meet custom
project requirements without affecting the
other modules and, most notably, impacting
the overall architecture.
• Flexible set-up which allows
enabling/disabling components and layers in
order to support “ad-hoc” system
configuration.
• Distributed deployment to enable hosting of
the various modules on different servers and
locations to assist scalability and best resource
utilisation.
• Integration of available open source and
commercial tools (on need basis) to create
competitive advantage re-using existing
implementations.
• Availability of APIs and Web Services for
supporting the interaction with external
systems and third-parties.
• Reliance on innovative Java EE standards
(version 5) and “state-of-the-art” open source
technology (Hibernate, Spring, Struts2,
Lucene, JasperReport). Adoption of open
standards such the Content Repository API
(JSR-170), Java Portlet Specification (JSR-
168), RSS, XML, HTTPS, LDAP, WebDAV.
• Focus on Web access, with the possibility in
the future to offer a desktop front-end when
offline capabilities and/or advanced data
manipulation are required.
5.2 Applications
The applications are the modules that implement
the business processes and workflows.
The Document Configuration and Change
Management system (DCCM) is a web application
whose main functions are:
• Document Configuration Control: recording
and managing of all documentation (technical
and contractual) which applies to the
configuration of a software or hardware
product/project.
• Approval Workflow: initiation and
management of document reviews. The
approval can either follow a simple sequential
model (one reviewer after the other) or
distribute to multiple individuals in parallel.
The system records the creation, distribution
and full history of the document evolution
throughout the approval loop.
• Change Management: control of all changes to
documents, versioning, applicability; linkage
to deviations and waivers, applicable and
reference documentation, includes
management of change occurring to groupings
of documents (such as baselines and data
packs).
• Document and Records Management: provide
an intuitive and powerful user interface to
retrieve the information related to both
documents and records.
• Creation, management and reporting of
collections of documents, either defined by the
users or by configurable tags (applicability).
The Review Item Discrepancy (RID) application
allows the creation and the management of formal
project reviews where collections of technical
documents are reviewed by nominated panels
during the difference phases of a space project.
Review Item Discrepancies are captured, tagged
and distributed within the project teams or across
the supply chain, all the way from the customer to
potentially the lowest tier of suppliers, according to
pre-defined levels of permissions.
The Action Items Manager (AIM) is the component
responsible for assigning actions, monitoring the
progress of the actions, the responses of the
actionees and all relevant information.
AIM offers a global view of all project actions
which might be originated by different people in
different contexts (or applications), and is intended
to formally manage Action Items Lists.
The NCTS (Non-Conformance Tracking System) is
intended to support the different actors in
recording, reporting and reviewing dispositions for
non-conforming items during the development of a
Space project/mission.
The main functions include the identification and
notification of Non-conformances, tracking Internal
and Customer Non-conformance Review Boards
(NRB) Dispositions and the management of all
associated information (project specific attributes,
NRB participants, attachments and tasks related to
the Non-conformances).
NCTS is accessible from different participants
(Customer, Prime, and Sub-contractors), and
therefore security mechanisms are implemented to
ensure that user access is dictated by both the
Product Tree of the project and the individual user
privileges.
Currently NCTS is not fully integrated in
ECLIPSE; however this work is planned for 2011.

5. 5.3 Services
The services are the elements that provide essential
functions to the applications and are re-usable
building blocks on which any new Application can
rely.
The Project Administration Module (PAM) is a
centralised repository of the project configuration
data, including the management of the user
privileges across the entire suite.
Its responsibilities include:
• Create and manage the projects
• Maintain the Project Folder Tree: the folder
break-down structure of the project
• Configure the Product Tree: the hardware
configuration associated with the project.
• Define user roles and privileges
PAM offers a web-interface to the project
administration functions within ECLIPSE.
The iLayout service module is responsible for the
management of the ECLIPSE layout and
appearance, including the static resources such as
CSS files, images, etc.
Its responsibilities include:
• Build a sandbox (container) where the
ECLIPSE web applications can run
• Define application skins and themes
(customised “look-and-feel” for each web
application)
• Manage the static resources
iLayout organises the management of all ECLIPSE
graphic resources allowing for defining a
customer/organisation specific look-and-feel.
The FLO (service module) is the workflow
manager which allows the applications to design,
maintain and run business-specific process
workflow. DCCM, for instance, leverages the FLO
engine to run the review and approval of
documents during the creation and up-issuing
stages.
The component offers a possibility to add and
customise team/project specific workflows to any
of the ECLIPSE applications on an as needs basis.
FLO is implemented on top of the JBoss BPM
(Business Process Modelling) engine, a popular
open source solution.
The JAIL service module (Java Authentication
Interface to LDAP) is responsible for the
management of the user credentials stored on the
LDAP Directory Service.
It includes two main parts:
• API available to all applications which need to
retrieve and manipulate the user information
• Web application providing access to the
administrators of the system for maintaining
the database of users.
JAIL is a cross-platform solution designed to work
with a variety of databases and LDAP repositories.
The Metadata Builder (META) service module is
an engine which supports the creation and
management of user-defined dynamic metadata.
The main function of META is to support the
system administrators (or users with a specific
access role) in the definition and set-up of metadata
related to the entities in the system, allowing each
project team to configure which attributes and
information need to be captured.
META is extensively used in DCCM where each
project customises the Document attributes as
needed. This introduce a very high degree of
flexibility which is required to cover all different
business cases, it even provides the means to
extend the semantic behaviour of the information
managed by ECLIPSE.
The AUDE (service module) component provides a
centralised repository for all ECLIPSE audit logs.
Critical user actions (access and manipulation of
records and documents) and application events
(notifications, document distributions) are logged
to ensure the full trace-ability of “who has done
what”. ECLIPSE administrators then have access to
the (large) auditing repository and are able to run
searches or reporting for documenting evidence of
changes to the information.
6. DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS
The deployment high level diagram below
illustrates the physical components, protocols and
interactions involved in the runtime configuration
of the ECLIPSE product.

6. Application Server
HTTP Server
J2EE Container
SSO
I/O
SQL
LDAP
HTTPS
HTTPS
FTP/ SMTP/ Network Drive
RDBMS
File System
Fax
File
Email
Content
Integrator
Server
LDAP
Figure 4 – Deployment Diagram
The system elements captured in the diagram are:
• Users accessing securely ECLIPSE via https
• An application server hosting the middle-tier
(Java EE applications, HTTP Server, the
Single Sign-On component)
• The Content Integration Server (integration of
external documents submitted through
different channels and protocols)
• The RDBMS (Relational Database) (repository
of application and user data)
• The file system (storage of application
attachments, resources)
• The LDAP Directory Service storage (user and
company details)
Designed to fit small, medium and large
organisations ECLIPSE offers multiple deployment
options.
6.1 Single Server
The simplest deployment configuration is based on
a single-server environment where a single instance
of ECLIPSE is deployed. RDBMS and Middle-Tier
(application server) could either reside on the same
hardware or on different physical machines. The
only prerequisite of this type of deployment is to
grant the Java applications (Middle-Tier) direct
access to the file system (creating/accessing files
and directories).
Figure 5 – Single Server Deployment Diagram
The “Single Server” configuration is suitable for
small and medium organisations wanting to host
ECLIPSE on a single server (either internally
located in the organisation Intranet or publicly
available on the Internet).
6.2 Internal & External Server
In this scenario the deployment involves a “dual-
server” environment in order to serve the Intranet
users as well as supporting external access. This
solution is the most reliable in terms of security and
performance. ECLIPSE is hosted on both the
Internal and External servers, however sensitive
data (records and documents) is always behind the
organisation firewall (no data is stored on the
external server). The security firewall is
responsible for governing the communication
between the two machines, typically allowing
in/out only a limited subset of protocols like, such
as, SQLNet (database connectivity) or LDAP
protocol.
Figure 6 – Dual Server Deployment Diagram
The “Dual Server” configuration is oriented
towards enterprises that can afford larger
investments in terms of infrastructure and network
set-up.
This set-up, as well as implementing the strictest
level of security for external access, offers the best
configuration for performance and scalability
purposes.

7. 7. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
ECLIPSE is designed to work on two types of
infrastructure:
• Oracle Infrastructure comprising the Oracle
10g/11g RDBMS and 10g R2 Application
Server.
• Open Source Infrastructure comprising the
PostgreSQL RDBMS and the JBoss
Application Server.
The two software stacks are presented in Figure 7:
on the left the Oracle-based stack which relies on
the market-leading database and application server,
while on the right the Open Source infrastructure
leveraging on enterprise-level solutions.
In both scenarios ECLIPSE adopts a mix of Open
Source frameworks and libraries which form the
foundation for implementation of the user and
business requirements.
Operating
System
RDBMS
Middle-Tier
Application
Software
Hibernate, Struts,
SpringFramework, JBPM
Oracle AS 10.1.5
Solaris
Oracle 10gR2 / Oracle 11g
Hibernate, Struts,
SpringFramework, JBPM
PostgreSQL 8.2
JBoss AS 4.2.x
CentOS
Oracle Open Source
Figure 7 – Infrastructure software stacks for
ECLIPSE
7.1 Java Specifications
Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) is the
industry standard for designing and developing
enterprise-class solutions coded in the Java
programming language.
Based on the solid ground provided by the Java
Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), Java EE
supplies additional libraries and services that
support the scalability, security, integrity, and other
non-functional requirements essential for enterprise
applications.
Java EE offers a robust and high performance
platform which has proved effective for the design,
development, maintenance and evolution of the
ECLIPSE suite. In particular, Java EE services
offer simplified access to critical aspects such as
connectivity, transactions, security, etc. ultimately
making development faster as well as improving
significantly the quality delivered.The table below
summaries the Java EE specifications currently
used in ECLIPSE.
Platform
Feature Description Version
JDK Java Development Kit 1.5.X
Servlet Specs Java Servlet API 2.4
JSP Specs Java Server Pages 2.0
JDBC Java Database Connectivity 3.0
JAX-RS Java RESTful Web Services 1.2
JTA Java Transaction API 1.1
JavaMail Java Mail API 1.4
Table 1 – Java EE specifications currently in use in
ECLIPSE
8. SECURITY
Security is a critical aspect of any Information
System dealing with confidential information,
especially in an environment where the nature of
many documents is classified and users might work
for organisations in direct competition.
Additionally the violation of Intellectual Property
(IP) and misuse of sensitive data represent one of
the worst threats for entire organisations.
ECLIPSE adheres to well-established security
standards available in the IT field, tackling the
security requirements on two different levels.
First, security is enforced in the network and server
layers (operating system, database, middle tier)
with the definition of security policies, deployment
of firewalls and implementation of available
standards such as SSL.
At the same time fundamental security-related best
practises are applied in the design, coding and
testing of the ECLIPSE applications.
8.1 User Authentication
User authentication is the process of establishing
the identity of the user/system accessing the
product.
Each request served by the ECLIPSE suite is
authenticated via JOSSO. Java Open Single Sign-
On (JOSSO) is a Single Sign-On solution for web
applications. It is an open source J2EE based
software for user authentication and authorization.
The software is released under the GNU Lesser
General Public License (LGPL).
The framework allows multiple web
servers/applications to authenticate users accessing
the protected pages against their credentials stored

8. on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
(LDAP) repository.
JOSSO exposes Single Sign On services using
SOAP over the HTTP protocol, allowing it to
easily integrate also with non-Java applications.
8.2 ECLIPSE Authorization
User authorization is the function of defining which
resources and information the user, once
authenticated, is entitled to access.
Authorization in ECLIPSE is implemented in two
stages: verification of access to the web application
and validation of the user privileges when
performing a specific action in ECLIPSE.
Upon access to the web application (URL check)
the user authorization is handled by JOSSO
together with the LDAP repository.
JOSSO ensures that the authenticated user has been
given application access by querying the LDAP
server: this takes place transparently to the
application itself since security, in this case, is
controlled by the Middle-Tier.
The next filter is applied by the application serving
the functionality. Each user in ECLIPSE is always
associated with the “User Wallet”, a registry of all
permissions granted to the user across the entire
system.
It is the responsibility of each application, using the
“User Wallet”, to establish whether a function,
screen or a given piece of information is accessible
to the user or not.
8.3 Password Management
In addition to the enhanced account controls,
ECLIPSE user passwords, on the LDAP server, are
encrypted using advanced encryption algorithms.
9. ECSS COMPLIANCE ROADMAP
ECLIPSE is built to support organizations
operating in the space sector to naturally adhere to
ECSS Standards while offering the benefit of
collaboration and information sharing. The table
below provides a summary of the current status of
existing planned modules adherence to the
pertinent ECSS standards.
10. EARLY ADOPTER OF ECLIPSE
OHB Systems AG (the prime contractor for the
GALILEO FOC projects) is the first commercial
customer of the ECLIPSE toolset with hundreds of
users across the various Applications. OHB-
Systems AG agreed to participate with Sapienza,
ESA and other stakeholders in a Configuration
Management Office for the ECLIPSE toolset to
ensure its consistent space sector focused evolution
11. CONCLUSIONS
The ECLIPSE toolset is unique in its nature, as it
addresses many needs of the space sector towards
harmonization, standardization and operability of
systems, processes and tools in an affordable way
for all the sector actors, from Prime Satellites to
sub-systems providers. It is recognized that many
major space sector players have developed in–
house highly sophisticated systems that address
some (but not all) of the functionalities and
business processes covered by ECLIPSE.
However as more and more collaboration and
exchange of information or data is required for the
successful delivery of a space project there is a
need for the sector to agree upon and using a
common toolset for those core Space PA, QA and
PM processes that will increase the performance of
those activities while lowering their costs.
By providing a tool specifically designed for space
and whose evolution will be driven by a
Configuration Management Board with key
stakeholders from the space industry, Sapienza can
assure its sustainability is in line with the needs of
the industry as a whole.