Statemachine Matching in BOM Based Model Composition

Abstract

Base Object Model (BOM) is a component-based standard designed to support reusability and Composability. Reusability helps in reducing time and cost of the development of a simulation process. Composing predefined components such as BOMs is a well known approach to achieve reusability. However, there is a need for a matching mechanism to identify whether a set of components are composable or not. Although BOM provides good model representation, it lacks capability to express semantic and behavioral matching.In this paper we propose an approach for matching behavior of BOM components by matching their statemachines. Our proposed process includes a static and a dynamic matching phase. In the static matching phase, we apply a set of rules to validate the structure of statemachines. In the dynamic matching phase, we execute the statemachines together at an abstract level on our proposed execution framework. We have developed this framework using the State Chart Extensible Markup Language (SCXML), which is a W3C compliant standard. If the execution terminates successfully (i.e. reaches specified final states) we conclude that there is a positive match and the behavior of these BOMs is composable. We describe the matching process and the implementation of our runtime environment in detail and present a case study as proof of concept.