Exploring HLA Process Model Gateway Components

As part of a MITRE Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM) independent research effort, a team of MITRE Corporation researchers is exploring the feasibility of building HLA gateway components for use in several commercial process modeling environments. The concept is to capture the information elements that are exchanged when work objects flow though a process model, and then to devise an HLA federation object model, tentatively called COTS FOM, that is the superset of information elements needed by the various commercial environments to accept an incoming work object generated elsewhere in the federation. If successful this will greatly expand the utility of existing process models in situations where individual processes interact as part of a larger enterprise or multi-enterprise consortium. A secondary output of this effort will be a set of prototype gateway components built in two or more COTS process model environments that will interface with the native COTS components within a process model and with the HLA COTS FOM within the "COTS Fed" federation. Then the RTI would publish events whenever a work object enters an outbound gateway component, as well as subscribe to events that trigger generation of native work objects from incoming gateway components. An expected limitation is that model interoperability will be somewhat limited, in comparison to a combat or command and control model where one event is of interest to many federates and causes many federate level reactions. However, COTS process model simulations typically model incoming work requests or raw materials feeding a single federate work flow process that then outputs finished products or documents to the next process in line. It is believed that the constraints of the component based COTS modeling environments will accommodate the limited HLA interoperability envisioned by the study team.