A MDA-based Approach for the Development of DEVS/SOA Simulations Andrea D’Ambrogio University of Rome TorVergata Rome, Italy dambro@info.uniroma2.it Daniele Gianni University of Oxford, Oxford, UK gianni@comlab.ox.ac.uk José L. Risco-Martín Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain jlrisco@dacya.ucm.es Alessandra Pieroni University of Rome TorVergata Rome, Italy pieroni@info.uniroma2.it Keywords: Discrete event simulation, DEVS, UML, MDA, model transformation, model-driven development Abstract The intrinsic complexity of the DEVS formalism and the manual production of DEVS-based simulations might constitute obstacles to the adoption of DEVS for both system modelers and simulation users. To overcome these obstacles, this paper introduces a model-driven approach for the development of DEVS simulations. The approach provides modelers and users with standard graphical modeling languages and with model transformation specifications for automated code production. Specifically, the approach enables the UML specification of DEVS models and automates the generation of DEVS simulations that make use of the DEVS/SOA implementation. An example application to the production of a DEVS/SOA simulation for a basic queuing system is also presented, to show the details of the proposed approach. 1. INTRODUCTION The DEVS formalism introduces a notation for rigorous and systematic definition of discrete event system models. The DEVS formalism has been provided with various simulation technologies, such as DEVSJAVA [Zeigler and Sarjoughian 2005] or DEVS/C++ [DEVSc++], which are used to produce the implementation of DEVS simulations from DEVS-based model specifications. The widespread adoption of the DEVS technologies can be hindered by the inherent difficulties and specificities of the DEVS formalism and by the semantic gap between the model specification and the corresponding implementation, in other words by the manual-based approach to the production of the simulation code from a DEVS model specification. The first problem can be overcome by adopting standard, general-purpose (i.e., non-simulation specific), modeling formalisms that abstract from simulation- and DEVS- specific characteristics, whereas the second one can be overcome by automating the generation of the simulation code from the model specification. In the software engineering community, the OMG (Object Management Group) has introduced both a standard modeling formalism, i.e., UML (Unified Modeling Language [UML]), and a framework for automated code generation, i.e., MDA (Model Driven Architecture [MDA]). This paper introduces a MDA-based approach for the development of DEVS simulations, with specific application to the DEVS/SOA implementation. The paper presents both the DEVS-oriented UML extensions that are at the basis of the proposed approach and the set of model transformations that have been specified to obtain the core portion of the final code from the high-level model specification of the system under simulation. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The related work section outlines this paper contribution with respect to the state-of-the-art. The background section gives the main concepts of DEVS/SOA and MDA technologies. The DEVS-MDA section illustrates the proposed approach and the example section finally presents the application of the MDA-based approach to the development and configuration of a DEVS/SOA-based simulation of a basic queuing system. 2. RELATED WORK The contribution of this paper can be related to already existing contributions in terms of two independent aspects: the platform independent representations of DEVS models and the automatic development of DEVS simulations from DEVS models specifications. In the first group, significant contributions can be found: in [Risco-Martín et al. 2007], [Janousek et al. 2006], [Mittal et al. 2007], [Bendre and Sarjoughian 2005], [Choi et al. 2006], [Posse et al. 2003] and [Risco-Martín et al. 2009]. DEVS/XML is introduced in [Risco-Martín et al. 2007] as a standard XML format for the representation of DEVS Models (i.e., component structure and hierarchical notation). The DEVS/XML approach differs from this paper approach in two ways: the model representation is textual, thus less readable compared to UML diagrams, and the simulation system cannot be automatically produced from a DEVS/XML file. Similarly, XML formats to represent DEVS models are introduced in [Janousek et al. 2006] and [Mittal et al. 2007]. Their contribution also includes the transformation from Platform Specific Models (PSMs) to Platform Independent Models (PIMs). However, this approach is still based on a textual representation of DEVS models.