Evelyne Vittori

A survey of Model-Driven approaches applied to DEVS - a comparative study of metamodels and transformations

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a subset of Software Engineering (SE) which focuses on models. MDE provides techniques and guidelines to create models (metamodeling) and to transform them onto other models (including code). Recently, several MDE approaches have been successfully applied to the world of Modeling and Simulation (M&S), of which DEVS (Discrete EVent system Specification) is one of the most popular formalisms. The goal of those approaches is to increase DEVS interoperability. Many of them resort to a metamodel to describe DEVS concepts. The most recent ones also provide automatic code generation “Model-To-Text” (M2T) towards DEVS simulators (DEVS “internal” interoperability) and establish links between DEVS and other formalisms, thanks to Model-To-Model (M2M) transformations (DEVS “external” interoperability). The purpose of this paper is to give a state of the art of the MDE contributions to DEVS formalism and to provide a comparative study of the most recent ones.

From State-transition Models to DEVS Models - Improving DEVS External Interoperability using MetaDEVS - A MDE Approach

In this paper, the issue of the “external” interoperability of DEVS models is discussed. Scientists often need to simulate non-DEVS models using a DEVS-oriented framework, in order, for instance, to make their DEVS and non-DEVS modes interoperate. The source formalisms we propose to transform onto DEVS models are those which are based on the “family” of states and transitions. A general and model-oriented approach called MetaDEVS is presented in this article. MetaDEVS is also the name given to the DEVS metamodel we use. This metamodel allows creating platform-independent DEVS models. This paper shows how models which belong to the state and transitions “family” can be mapped onto DEVS, and more exactly onto MetaDEVS-based DEVS models, following the MetaDEVS approach. Then, the approach is applied to a concrete case: we transform Finite-State Machine (FSM) models into MetaDEVS models, using ATL, a hybrid language (which mixes both declarative and imperative rules), within the Eclipse Modelling Framework. A metamodel to describe the FSM formalism is also proposed.

Specification languages as front-ends towards the DEVS formalism

This paper constitutes a state-of-the art of specification languages relevant to be used as front-ends towards the DEVS (Discrete EVent System Specification) formalism. Comparison criteria are defined to evaluate specification languages for the description of DEVS structures. Finally, the need for building an original front-end, accounting for the whole criteria, is discussed.

A Meta-Model for DEVS

In this paper we give a state-of-art of DEVS components interoperability, and we propose a meta-model for classic DEVS formalism, designed following a Model-Driven Engineering philosophy. After glancing at the existing related works, we explain in a step-by-step way how our meta-model is built, starting from the formal definition of DEVS formalism. As the hardest steps when defining a DEVS Platform-Independent Model (PIM) are the definition of the states and the definition of the DEVS functions, we particularly focus on those concepts and we propose a way to describe them in a simple and platform-independent way. UML class diagrams were chosen to represent this meta-model. Not only can this meta-model be useful to generate DEVS PIMs but it can also be seen as a powerful tool to improve interoperability between DEVS models (and in a larger way discrete-event models, via model-to-model transformations) and to provide automatic code generation towards DEVS simulators