Model-driven software development and descrete event simulation - Concepts and example

Model-driven software development (MDSD) is a current direction in software engineering that underlines the importance of models in contrast to program code. Since models have always been of central importance in simulation, some aspects of MDSD are especially helpful to support discrete event simulation (DES) studies. In this paper a case study concerning the development of an MDSD-compliant domain architecture for DES is presented. This includes code generation facilities for the object oriented simulation framework DESMO-J based on a new UML profile for DES and using techniques and tools from MDSD. On the basis of these experiences a discussion about general prospects and drawbacks of applying MDSD to the development of simulation models as well as interactive simulation tools is lead. A modeling cycle for building simulation studies that makes the use of model-driven techniques possible is proposed.