Using Meta-Modelling and Graph Grammars to Process GPSS Models
Juan D. Lara, Hans Vangheluwe · 2002
This paper discusses the benefits of combining meta-modelling and graph transformations to automatically generate modelling tools for simulation formalisms. In meta-modelling, formalisms are modelled in their own right at a meta-level within an appropriate meta-formalism. A meta-model processor uses this information to automatically generate tools to process –create, edit, check, optimize, transform and generate simulators for – the models in the described formalism. We propose the representation of (meta-)models as graphs, and subsequently specify model manipulations as graph grammars. We also present AToM 3, A Tool for Multi-formalism and Meta-Modelling which implements these concepts. As an example, we show how to build a meta-model for the popular process interaction discrete event language GPSS in AToM 3. From this meta-model, AToM 3 automatically generates a visual tool to build GPSS models. We also define a graph grammar to generate textual code for the HGPSS simulator from the graphically specified GPSS models.