A CONTEXT-BASED OBJECT-ORIENTED APPLICATION FRAMEWORK FOR DISCRETE-EVENT SIMULATION

Applying object-oriented programming (OOP) to construct simulation pro grams has gained momentum in the research community. Major research ef forts involved with object-oriented paradigm adopted in discrete-event simulation are reviewed in this paper, along with a simulation applic ation framework proposed which provides special reusability mechanisms . This object-oriented simulation framework consists of three object e lements, that is, model, service and scheduler. The relations and inte ractions 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. Eac h simulation context is used to model a component sub-system, e.g. the control or physical flows of a manufacturing system. A practical syst em, CSIMT++, is also developed to validate the feasibility of such a s imulation application framework. Furthermore, various forms of applica tion models based on this framework are also illustrated. Copyright (C ) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd