AN APPROACH TO DISCRETE EVENT MODELLING PART 3:THE TRANSACTION, ACTIVITY AND EVENTS APPROACHES

This is the third paper in a series dealing with discrete event simulation modelling. The first part [BIRT 81b] looked at Simula. The second part [BIRT 81c] looked at the process style of discrete event modelling, and used a simple model of steel mill operations as an example. In this part we rework the mill model in the transaction, activity, and event styles, coding it in the archetypal language of each style (GPSS, ECSL, and SIMSCRIPT respectively). In each case, we display an appropriate Simula mini-context. This enables us to show the strengths and weaknesses of these styles from a programmer's point of view, and the threads that hold them together.