Frameworks for Component-based Simulation

Abstract

The need to reduce development costs of simulation models has led to recent efforts for setting simulation standards that foster model reuse and interoperability. Specifically, the High Level Architecture (HLA) is a new simulation standard supported by the US Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO). It has been adopted as the standard technical architecture for all US Department of Defense simulations. In the meantime, the commercial sector has had successful efforts in developing enabling technologies for distributed computing; namely, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) by the Object Management Group (OMG). CORBA is a large and complex set of specifications and protocols that utilizes the objectoriented paradigm to achieve distributed object-oriented computing environments that allow object interoperability and reuse. When used as an infrastructure for simulation model reuse and interoperability, both HLA and CORBA exhibit merits and limitations. Since HLA and CORBA were developed independently, need exists for a comparative evaluation of the two architectures as a basis for component-based simulation. In this paper, both HLA and CORBA are presented in the context of component-based simulation model development and interoperability. The two architectures are compared against four comparison criteria that are related to their conceptual foundation and design.