A Hybrid Approach to Modeling SOA Systems of Systems Using CPN and MESA/Extend

Service oriented architectures (SOAs) are rapidly becoming an accepted means of providing network information exchange across a heterogeneous fabric of nodes. Given the complexity of such architectures and multiple levels of system interactions, creating a valid and usable SoS model for SOA application using a single technique that captures the desired level of details can be a daunting task. In this paper we give details of a hybrid approach to modeling and simulation of a specific SOA that is named MCSOA and has been configured for potential defense applications. In this approach, at the lowest system level (call it white-box level) we are using colored Petri nets (CPNs) to model internal protocols, communications, and resource consumption. This allows us to validate the components of the system and identify weaknesses at the component level. For the interaction at the highest system level (call it black-box level), we are using a set of discrete-event simulation tools known as MESA/Extend. The major advantage of this combination is that the assumptions at the black-box level are fully validated at the white-box level, which greatly simplifies and accelerates the design, development, and testing of the simulations of very large scale SOA-based systems of systems.