Introduction to information and process modeling for simulation

Abstract

In simulation engineering, a system model mainly consists of an information model and a process model. In the fields of Information Systems and Software Engineering (IS/SE) there are widely used standards such as the Class Diagrams of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for making information models, and the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) for making process models. This tutorial presents a general approach how to use UML class diagrams and BPMN process diagrams at all three levels of model-driven simulation engineering: for making conceptual simulation models, for making platform-independent simulation design models, and for making platform-specific, executable simulation models. In our approach, object and event types are modeled as stereotyped classes and random variables are modeled as stereotyped operations constrained to comply with a specific probability distribution, while event rules/routines are modeled both as BPMN patterns and in pseudo-code.