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In simulation engineering, a system model mainly consists of an information model describing a system's state structure and a process model describing its dynamics. In the fields of Information Systems and Software Engineering, there are widely used standards such as the Class Diagrams of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for making information models, and the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) for making process models. This tutorial presents a general Object Event Modeling (OEM) approach for Discrete Event Simulation modeling using UML class diagrams and BPMN-based process diagrams at all three levels of model-driven simulation engineering: for making conceptual domain models, for making platform-independent simulation design models, and for making platform-specific, executable simulation models. In this approach, object and event types are modeled as special categories of UML classes, random variables are modeled as a special category of UML operations constrained to comply with a specific probability distribution, and queues are modeled as ordered association ends, while event rules are modeled both as BPMN-based process diagrams and pseudo-code. In Part II, we will discuss the more advanced OEM concepts of activities and GPSS/SIMAN/Arena-style Processing Networks. Finally, in Part III, we will further extend the OEM paradigm towards agent-based modeling and simulation by adding the concepts of agents with perceptions, actions and beliefs.
The term Computer Simulation subsumes different simulation paradigms, languages and implementation technologies as well as many different application areas each with its own scientific communities. So, there is clearly a lot of conceptual, methodological, technological and application diversity in the area of Computer Simulation. From its start in 1967, the Winter Simulation Conference managed to get four scientific communities involved: computer scientists, electrical engineers, industrial engineers and mathematicians (operations researchers). Only later, in 2011 and 2012, an attempt was made to get environmental and social scientists involved who have been adopting the idea of "individual-based" or "agent-based" simulation. Today, two American, a European and an Asian social simulation conference have been established. How much unity exists between the scientific areas and communities represented by the Winter Simulation Conference? How much unity exists between the scientific areas and communities represented by the newer social science simulation conferences? And how much unity exists between Discrete Event Simulation and the newer forms of social science simulation? These and other questions about the unity and diversity of Computer Simulation have been discussed via email from April 17 to May 17, 2018, by five leading experts: Alexis Drogoul, Paul Fishwick, Nigel Gilbert, Dennis Pegden and Levent Yilmaz, moderated by Gerd Wagner.