Using Meta-Modelling and Graph Grammars to Process GPSS Models

This paper discusses the benefits of combining metamodelling and graph transformations to automatically generate modelling tools for simulation formalisms. In metamodelling, 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 AToM3, 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 AToM3. From this meta-model, AToM3 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.