Integrating a Signaling Component Model into a Railway Simulation

Abstract

The validation of software component models is an important activity: The software product usually is derived more directly from a model than from a classical textual specifcation. Modeling tool suites support this activity by providing code generation and model simulation features. For simulation, an environment for the component needs to be set up: This may be stubs, or the real environment. We report on a third approach where a signaling component model is integrated into a railway simulation. We present the steps taken and what needs to be considered, the integration architecture, and give an account of which kinds of problems have been detected thanks to the simulation. From the successful integration we conclude that the generic model as well as the confguration data used for the integration are valid. Finally, we compare the aforementioned approaches to environments for model simulation.