In collaboration with the SOC, the SSC has made a major contribution to the development of the XMM-Newton Science Analysis System (SAS, see § 6.1) provided by the SOC to the community to enable XMM-Newton data analysis to be carried out by XMM-Newton observers. The SAS provides XMM-Newton-specific software tools for all XMM-Newton science data. It allows the processing of the Observation Data Files (ODFs, see § 6.1.1) sent to the observer through to high-level science products, but does not, in general, aim to provide the high-level analysis tools (e.g. spectral fitting) themselves.