Title: A rule-based semantic matching of base object models

Authors: Farshad Moradi, Rassul Ayani, Shahab Mokarizadeh, Gary Tan

Addresses: Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), 164 90 Stockholm, Sweden. ' School of Information and Communication Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Electrum 229, S-164 40 Kista, Sweden. ' School of Information and Communication Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Electrum 229, S-164 40 Kista, Sweden. ' School of Computing, National University of Singapore, 13 Computing Drive, Singapore 117417

Abstract: Creating simulation models via composition of predefined and reusable components is an efficient way of reducing costs and time associated with the simulation model development. However, to successfully compose models one has to solve the issues of syntactic and semantic composability of components. The Base Object Model (BOM) standard is an attempt to ease reusability and composition of simulation models. However, the BOM does not contain sufficient information for defining necessary concepts and terms to avoid ambiguity, and neither does it have any method for dynamic aspects matching conceptual models (i.e., their state-machines). In this paper, we present our approach for enhancement of the semantic contents of BOMs and propose a three-layer model for syntactic and semantic matching of BOMs. The enhancement includes ontologies for entities, events and interactions in each component. We also present an OWL-S description for each component, including the state-machines. To test our approach, we specify some simulation scenarios and implement BOMs as building blocks for development of those scenarios, one of which is presented in this paper. We also define composability degree, which quantifies closeness of the composed model to a given model specification. Our results show that the three-layer model is promising and can improve and simplify the composition of BOM-based components.

Keywords: semantic matching; BOMs; base object models; simulation models composition; modelling; component reuse; syntactic composability; semantic composability; ontologies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSPM.2009.028626

International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling, 2009 Vol.5 No.2, pp.132 - 145

Received: 31 May 2008
Accepted: 13 Oct 2008
Published online: 21 Sep 2009 *

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