A context-based object-oriented application framework for discrete event simulation

Applying object-oriented programming (OOP) to construct simulation programs has gained momentum in the research community. Major research efforts involved with object-oriented paradigm adopted in discrete-event simulation are reviewed in this paper, along with a simulation application framework proposed which provides special reusability mechanisms. This object-oriented simulation framework consists of three object elements, that is, model, service and scheduler. The relations and interactions among these elements are also demonstrated. In addition, the abstraction of a model under such a framework is reached by a special concept and implementation, referred to as the simulation context. Each simulation context is used to model a component sub-system, e.g. the control or physical flows of a manufacturing system. A practical system, CSIMT+ +, is also developed to validate the feasibility of such a simulation application framework. Furthermore, various forms of application models based on this framework are also illustrated.