Notice: this Wiki will be going read only early in 2024 and edits will no longer be possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.
AMP UserGuide/AMF/MetaModel
Contents
The Agent Modeling Framework MetaABM / Acore Meta-Model
Important Note
The MetaABM "metaabm" meta-model will be transitioning to a significantly changed "acore" meta-model as part of the overall AMP project plan. At the moment, metaabm is serving as the AMF meta-model. We'll be providing automated migration tools, so developers can use it without worry about future compatibility. To avoid having to re-edit all of this documentation, we'll be referring to "acore" below, unless we anticipate a change in which case we'll tag that with (metaabm).
Background
The foundation of the Agent Modeling Framework is "acore" (metaabm). It's is designed to be a general representation or “meta-model” for Agent-Based Models. As the name implies, the "acore" model (will be) analogous to the EMF "ecore" meta-model but provides representations that are suited to agent-based and other modeling (in the "modeling and simulation" sense of the word) oriented domains. Models can be fully defined within the acore lingua franca and model implementations can then be generated from those models with no further coding or configuration. The system as whole currently provides a hierarchical visual editor and reference implementations targeting the Escape, Ascape and Repast Simphony platforms. MetaABM is built upon the Eclipse Modeling Framework and a number of other Modeling project technologies, including Xpand. AMF is fully integrated with the Eclipse IDE platform, but acore models themselves need have no dependencies on any particular technology beyond XML/XSD. We do not imagine that the meta-model covers every possible model instance, or that we have not overlooked important issues.
Acknowledgements
The AMF meta-model started life as "score", a component of the Repast Simphony environment. It wasn't fully utilized within Simphony, and migrated from there to the MetaABM project. The MetaABM project defined a complete editor, code-generation and model execution suite that formed the initial AMP AMF contribution. Argonne National Labs supported the initial development of score and Metascape, LLC continued development of MetaABM and both agreed to contribute the relevant IP to the Eclipse project in 2009. The previous meta-models serveed as a “straw-agents” that have allowed the community to refine and explore key representational issues. Some of the following discussion is drawn from previous Metascape documentation and is released by the author (Miles Parker) under ECL.
Meta-Model Design
The acore / MetaABM meta-model is made up of three main packages. This is all based on MetaABM, and while names and important details will change for Acore, the core design should be quite similar.
Structure
Behavior
Functions
