M&S within the Model Driven Architecture

Currently, standardized distributed simulation systems are likely to follow the High Level Architecture (HLA) standard, not only because it is widely adopted in the United States for DoD applications, but also because it can be seen as the most matured M&S standard in this domain. However, the HLA focuses on the implementation level; thus it cannot solve problems on the conceptual level, such as validation, verification, or composability of models. The Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) deals successfully with the conceptual challenges, but its application is limited to the academic community. The M&S community is still looking for a general method insuring interoperability on all levels, from the syntactic level via the semantic level to the pragmatic/dynamic level, and maybe even to the most general conceptual level. To this end, the communication-driven ideas of the HLA must be merged with the conceptually driven ideas of DEVS, preferably in a commercially viable way. One candidate is the Model Driven Architecture (MDA), proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG). The MDA can best be described as an overarching standard framework merging various middleware solutions and platform independent models of various application domains, using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as the common concept gluing the various components together. This paper introduces the concepts of the MDA and shows, how the complementary ideas and methods of the HLA and DEVS can be merged into a well-defined M&S application domain within the MDA framework, allowing heterogeneous solutions as well as the migration from existing solutions to alternatives. The focus of this paper is the proposal of a framework of methods ensuring reusability, composability, and orchestration of events in a heterogeneous M&S and information technology environment, based on the migration of successful and accepted concepts.