5 Science analysis software

The software used to generate the products has been produced by the SSC and the XMM-Newton SOC, with the extensive support by the instrument hardware teams. It is run in a fixed configuration for the pipeline generation. However the complete set of tasks is bundled together as the Science Analysis Sub-System to allow the Guest Observer to perform intercative analysis of the data.

A GUI aids the user to select task parameters and browse data sets, or point to extensive help documentation. Individual tasks have been chained together to make the calibrated lists, form image products, perform complex detection tasks etc. These metatasks can be re-run by the user with different activation parameters or updated calibration files. An interactive data display and filtering tool allows the user to visually inspect the event lists, filter the data with arbitrary selection expressions, extract images and spectra for later analysis with the SAS and other data analysis packages. The SAS contains an interactive calibration viewer which can be used to display each of the corrections applied to the data. This viewer uses the calibration data sets available to the user and links them with the calibration algorithms available in the SAS to display their combined effect.

As noted in the accompanying papers, the proto-type SAS tasks have been used extensively for basic processing. The public release of the collection of software tools will be made before the end of 2000.