Röhl, Mathias (2006) Platform Independent Specification Of Simulation Model Components. In: 20th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation, Bonn, May 28-31, 2006. Proceedings,, pp. 220-225.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Simulation model composability is a highly debated issue, especially the specific requirements of model components as compared to software compo-nents. Selected software component techniques are reviewed and adapted according to simulation mod-els needs. Standard technologies like UML and XML are exploited to form the basis for a specification layer that wraps model definitions. This layer accounts for explicit dependencies, compositions, and parametriza-tion of simulation models. Thereby, the specification of model components can be done in a platform and simu-lation system independent manner. For the purpose of simulation a mapping to a concrete modeling formalism becomes necessary. This is here done on the example of the Parallel DEVS formalism. Introduction The need to combine models whose development is spread in space and time increases. Middleware ap-proaches like HLA (IEEE, 2000) focus on the interop-erability of entire simulation systems. Thereby, the in-tegration of very heterogeneous models is supported. HLA is based on low-level synchronization between simulation systems via events (Tolk, 2002). More re-cent work has shifted focus from pure wiring solutions to the semantic dimensions of interoperability (Brutz-man et al., 2002). Today, it is accepted that inter-operability is necessary but not sufficient to compose complex simulation models (Tolk and Muguira, 2003) as the composition of models alludes to the grand chal-lenge of re-using models (Overstreet et al., 2002). There is a vivid discussion about composability of simulation models and how simulation model compo-nents differ from software components. While many simulationists stress the differences between software and model components (Davis and Anderson, 2004; Kasputis and Ng, 2000), some argue that software com-ponents and model components face basically the same challenges. This paper takes a pragmatic approach to the problem of model composition by reviewing exist-ing software component solutions and adapting them according to their suitability in the context of simula-tion. UML specifications of components and compo-sitions (OMG, 2005), XML representations of entities, and the Parallel DEVS formalism (Zeigler et al., 2000) will serve as the integrative cornerstones of the pre-sented approach. The paper is structured as follows. It starts with a short introduction to software components. Sub-sequently, it relates them to the problem of simula-tion model composability and the special requirements of model components. Four central cornerstones for a simulation model component approach are identi-fied and arranged with activities of a simulation study. Each cornerstone is presented in detail and illustrated on simple examples. Finally, related work is discussed.
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