Section: Software

Open Similation Architecture (OSA)

Participants : Olivier Dalle [correspondant] , Van Dan Nguyen, Judicaël Ribault.

Developed in Java ($80\%$) and XML, AspectJ, etc. Represent the work of about 8 man/year during the last 6 years.

Component-based modeling has many well-known good properties. One of these properties is the ability to distribute the modeling effort amongst several experts, each having his/her own area of system expertise. Clearly, the less experts have to care about areas of expertise of others, the more efficient they are in modeling sub-systems in their own area. Furthermore, the process of studying complex systems using discrete-event computer simulations involves several areas of non-system expertise, such as discrete-event techniques or experiment planning.

The Open Simulation Architecture (OSA) [97] is designed to enforce a strong separation of the end-user roles and therefore, ensure a successful cooperation of all the experts involved in the process of simulating complex systems.

The OSA architecture is also intended to meet the expectations of a large part of the discrete-event simulation community: it provides an open platform intended to support researchers in a wide range of their simulation activities, and allows the reuse and sharing of system models in the simulation community by means of a flexible and generic component model (Fractal).

Many discrete-event simulators are developed concurrently, but with identical or similar purpose. Another goal of OSA is to favor the reuse and integration of simulation software components and models. To favor reuse, OSA uses a layered approach to combine the modeling, simulation, and related concerns, such as instrumentation or deployment. This ability is demonstrated by the successful integration and reuse of third-party components, such as Scave, the analysis module of Omnet++, or a large number of the James II plugins developed by the University of Rostock. OSA is both a testbed for experimenting new simulation techniques and a tool for real case studies.

OSA is Open Source (LGPL) and is available for download on the INRIA forge server http://osa.gforge.inria.fr/ .

See also the web page http://osa.inria.fr/ .