A Hybrid Architecture Framework for Simulations in a Service-Oriented Environment

Abstract

Service orientation, and more recently, the notions of cloud technology that service orientation enable, are designed to accommodate the need for flexible enterprise business processes. Through standardized interfaces, a service‐oriented architecture (SOA) should enable one to build and rebuild software systems readily and rapidly in a methodological manner. However, certain domains have specialized architectural standards; an example in point is modeling and simulation (M&S), for which there exist mature architectural standards, that may even have many of the characteristics strived for in SOA. An important issue is, therefore, how to integrate specialized architectures into a wider SOA. Using defense information systems and M&S as a case, we outline a hybrid architecture framework for specialized architectures in an encompassing SOA. Although it may be possible to dissolve a specialized architecture into the encompassing SOA at implementation time, we argue that it is important to be able to model the specialized architecture as an integral intact part. We further advocate a pragmatic notion of reference architecture in terms of appropriate level of abstraction and domain specificity to avoid pitfalls that may render architecture work unusable.

Modeling and Simulation as a Service infrastructure capabilities for discovery, composition and execution of simulation services

“…The efforts in the preceding discussion should contribute to making the MSaaS reference architecture 4 more specific and useful to developers, service providers, and service consumers than it is in its current form, which is more in the form of an overarching architecture. 81…”

“…Earlier discussions 81 have remarked that the notion of ''reference architecture'' should be reserved for blueprint architectures that contain more detail than what is perhaps commonly the case for many so-called reference architectures. The efforts in the preceding discussion should contribute to making the MSaaS reference architecture 4 more specific and useful to developers, service providers, and service consumers than it is in its current form, which is more in the form of an overarching architecture.…”

“…The efforts in the preceding discussion should contribute to making the MSaaS reference architecture 4 more specific and useful to developers, service providers, and service consumers than it is in its current form, which is more in the form of an overarching architecture. 81 By elaborating on the essential MSaaS infrastructure capabilities, that is, simulation data management capabilities, simulation composition capabilities, and simulation SMC capabilities, we hope to shed light on how simulation services and composed simulation services can be discovered, composed, and executed in practice, using implementation-independent simulation service descriptions at design time and implementation-specific service description at implementation time.…”

Architectural work for modeling and simulation combining the NATO Architecture Framework and C3 Taxonomy

“…Here, this promotes a reference architecture topology where a simulation environment interoperating over HLA interoperates with C2 planning systems over C2SIM standards. 11 …”

“…12 The C3 Taxonomy is then a repository of C3 ABBs and APs and is a an overarching architecture for our purposes. 11 A reference architecture should support the development of capability packages. 3 A reference architecture is an implementation-independent perspective that captures operational business processes, information products, user requirements, interface specifications and logical architectural patterns.…”