Simulation Driven Development of Distributed Systems – Coupling of virtual and real system components

Abstract

Looking at the end-to-end processing, typical software-intensive systems are built as a system-of-systems where each sub-system specializes according to both the business and technology perspective. One challenge is the integration of all systems into a single systemcrossing technological and organizational boundaries as well as functional domains. To facilitate the successful integration, we apply the system design process Simulation Driven Development (SDD). The basic idea is the application of realistic simulation models in parallel to existing software engineering procedures to enable testing and validation from day one. In this article we discuss the coupling of sub-systems implemented as virtual simulation models with sub-systems implemented as real sub-systems to enable unit tests against system level. Two approaches are presented: loose coupling and tight coupling.