Component-Based Simulation Model Development Using BOMs and Web Services

Modelling and simulation (M&S) is a valuable tool and provides means for reducing, amongst others, manufacturing and training costs. However, development of simulation models is a multi-disciplinary and time/resource consuming process. Building simulation models through composition and reuse of predefined and already existing validated simulation components is an approach to reduce the associated costs and improving the usability of the models. The base object model, BOM, is a new standard for defining reusable and composable simulation components. However, BOMs lack the necessary expressive power to ensure semantic matching of simulation components. In Web service composition (WSC), composite services are built by assembling existing services in order to address functionalities required by users. In WSC much emphasis has been on including the semantic aspects of the composition, through among others utilization of the semantic Web concept. In this paper we describe a process that has been developed at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) with the aim to speed up and improve the development of simulation models. This process utilizes the BOM concept and extends it by taking advantage of the techniques used in WSC. We will present our approach and findings based on our implementation of the proposed process