Artifact meta-models for composable simulation

摘要

This paper presents our artifact meta-models designed for facilitating artifact selection and composable simulation. In particular, meta-models incorporate function and form attributes to explicitly describe external characteristics and inter-connection requirements of artifacts. In addition, artifact meta-models are associated with behavior models, so that a user can choose artifacts with desired function and form features and then use their behavior models in simulation studies. Our artifact-models are developed in an object-oriented fashion and are specified in extensible markup language (XML). To manage the complexity associated with a large number of artifact attributes, the function and form attributes are organized in a hierarchical fashion. The paper discusses our methodologies developed for designing artifact attribute hierarchy and the research issues that need to be addressed in future work.