SBIR-STTR Award

Current data models and standards are insufficient to provide semantically and syntactically correct interoperability among executable architectures developed in different tools. They fall short due to a lack of common data elements required to express executable-architecture concepts using different implementation techniques and a lack of a means to guarantee conformance to mandatory and optional elements that guarantee predictable interoperability. Expand proposes to address these shortcomings by developing a common data model for executable architectures containing data elements designed to resolve commonality in the following areas: How execution timing is expressed How execution conditions (firing controls) are expressed How functional inputs and outputs are expressed How functional relationships between inputs and outputs are expressed In addition to the common data model for executable architecture, Expand proposes to develop a conformance matrix to define levels at which the various executable-architecture tools support the executable common data model. This conformance matrix allows for meaningful partial support for the common data model and addresses cases for which direct interoperability is not possible between executable architectures due to fundamental differences. Support to equal levels as defined by the proposed conformance matrix by disparate tools will guarantee semantic and syntactic interoperability.

Many techniques and tools have been developed to model and simulate system performance and operation. Robust answers are now needed to a broader class of theatre-wide/enterprise-wide problems not readily addressed by integrating legacy architectures lacking a common description of executable content. Executable architecture data model (EADM) developed in a feasibility study now allows for tools to embed within architecture descriptive execution rules that can be unambiguously interpreted by other tools. Implementation of the EADM has been prototyped in a tagged-data (XML) format, to be integrated into tools using three architecture languages: Colored Petri Nets (CPN), Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Integrated Definition Methods (IDF0). Complete interoperability will be achieved within CPN-based tools (VSO, CPN-Tools). Limited interoperability for IDEF0 and UML tools may result from incomplete or opaque specification of execution rules. A gap analysis will identify these limitations. Performed tests will establish whether the semantics of one tool’s execution rules are preserved when translated from its local execution format to EADM XML implementation format and then converted to the local execution format of the second tool. A conformance matrix will be developed describing the extent to which the executable content expressed by tools and languages can populate the EADM.

Keywords:
Interoperability, Uml, Dodaf, Idef0, Dap, Executable Architectures, Dars, Business Rules