The most fundamental part of the framework consists of seven classes. The other classes in the model library are common utility classes, and not part of the basic modeling scheme. One of the seven classes is the controlling Simulation class, which knows about all the elements of the simulation, and is used to initiate processing. The user must create just one of these per simulation. The other six are all abstract classes which provide the architectural mechanisms. In order to produce a meaningful simulation, concrete classes must be derived from these and instantiated to build up the model.
The main relationships between the seven fundamental classes are
illustrated in figure 4. All components of a
simulation, whether containers, or any type of processor, derive from
ProcessBase. This is the main inheritance tree. Separate from this
are the DataPorts, which are only connected to Process classes by
containment. Note that ProcessContainers do not directly
contain DataPorts, but just other ProcessBase derived classes
(which might themselves contain DataPorts). Finally, the simulation
must know about all of the ProcessBase derived objects to be used
in the simulation.
Descriptions of the classes follow, although more detailed descriptions can be found in reference documentation [1].
