A Description Structure for Simulation Model Components

摘要

In this paper, we have proposed a description structure for simulation model components. Such a description structure is crucial for fully exploiting the advantages a component-based approach can offer. It supports the re-use of components developed by third parties, without being obliged to inspect every detail of the component itself. Only with concise and meaningful descriptions can developers of simulation models really save time and effort by using components. The descriptions may also serve as a contract between component supplier and component consumer. Moreover, they support the development of a functioning market for simulation model components. The description structure we have developed is based on specification approaches for software components and web services. These specification approaches put the stress on the semantics of components. Describing the semantics of a component is a common goal for software and simulation model components. However, software and simulation model components are so different in nature that a specialized description structure for simulation model components is needed. Our description structure is tailor-made for simulation model components. It contains sections where the simulation-specific characteristics of a model component can be described, mainly focusing on the semantics of interfaces and functionalities to represent reduction and abstraction. On the other hand, it was our goal to accommodate all kinds of simulation model components in different paradigms, for example discrete as well as continuous and stochastic as well as deterministic ones. With two examples, we have demonstrated the usefulness of our description structure. In the future, we intend to perform further case studies, covering all relevant kinds of simulation components. The current description is a first attempt to describe model components. Many of the proposed slots are tilled in unstructured text form. We made a first step towards clarifying what information is needed to support reuse of model components. The next step will be to find more suitable representations, which make it easier to search for and analyze this information.