CN102663202A

CN102663202A - Dynamic product cooperative development platform and method based on federation mode

Info

Publication number: CN102663202A
Application number: CN2012101254542A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 范文慧; 吴淞; 王威; 岳英超
Original assignee: Tsinghua University
Current assignee: Tsinghua University
Priority date: 2012-04-25
Filing date: 2012-04-25
Publication date: 2012-09-12

Abstract

The invention discloses a dynamic product cooperative development platform based on a federation mode and aims at solving the problem that the prior art does not support the dynamic joint and quit of application federation members. The dynamic product cooperative development platform based on the federation mode comprises a bottom layer communication support system, a federation execution support environment unit, a plurality of federation execution support environment interface modules and a plurality of application federation members. The invention provides a dynamic product cooperative development method based on the federation mode, and the method at least comprises the following steps of: application federation building, application federation joint and application federation quit. The dynamic product cooperative development platform and the dynamic product cooperative development method based on the federation mode have the advantages that the development period can be shortened, the development efficiency is improved, and the performance is good. The platform and the method are suitable for the advanced manufacture field and the software engineering technical field.

Description

Dynamic product collaborative development platform and method based on federal mode

Technical Field

The invention relates to a dynamic product collaborative development platform and a dynamic product collaborative development method based on a federal mode.

Background

The collaborative design is a design mode which appears in order to adapt to the new situation that the competition of the world industrial market is increased continuously and the product updating is more and more frequent. This is an all-round synergy: from the organizational structure, with the increasingly fine production division, enterprises begin to concentrate on developing parts with core competitiveness, and other parts are handed over to other enterprises for development, and enterprises around the world begin to carry out collaborative development based on the global manufacturing network; from the development process, the traditional serial development is converted into parallel development, the development of the product is not only the matter of a developer, but the personnel and the organization at each stage of the life cycle of the product are participated in at the beginning of the development, and the problems of market demand, user requirement, manufacture, assembly, maintenance, environmental protection and the like are comprehensively considered; from the technical composition, products are increasingly complex, the technologies relating to aspects of machinery, control, electronics, hydraulic pressure, pneumatics, software and the like need the cooperation of multidisciplinary technologies; from the viewpoint of development environment, the supporting environments used by enterprises, departments and disciplines are different and are the cooperation among heterogeneous supporting environments.

Design, simulation and optimization are important product development activities. In the collaborative design, the design, simulation and optimization application of different enterprises, different development stages, different disciplines and different support environments also need to be widely and deeply collaborated, and the collaborative development method has a significant influence on the quality of collaborative development.

From the perspective of an integration mode, the existing mainstream development method for designing, simulating and optimizing a collaborative product generally adopts a compact integration mode of a collaborative component and a certain collaborative development supporting environment, and the collaborative component is difficult to dynamically join and exit. In some occasions, the enterprises, disciplines and supporting environments participating in collaborative development change frequently (for example, innovative development), a collaborative product development system is required to have strong dynamic adjustment capability, and collaborative components are difficult to dynamically join and exit, so that inconvenience is brought to adjustment of the system.

The HLA is an effective framework for supporting distributed dynamic collaboration, but so far, the HLA is still mainly applied to the field of collaborative simulation, and collaborative application based on design, simulation and optimization of the HLA does not appear. That is, no collaborative product development method in a loose integration mode which meets the dynamic collaborative requirements of design, simulation and optimization exists so far.

Disclosure of Invention

In order to overcome the defects, the invention provides a dynamic product collaborative development platform based on a federal mode, which can be dynamically added or withdrawn by using federal members.

In order to achieve the above object, in one aspect, the present invention provides a dynamic product collaborative development platform based on a federation mode, where the platform includes a bottom layer communication support system, a federation execution support environment unit, a plurality of federation execution support environment interface modules, and a plurality of application federation members; wherein,

the bottom communication support system is used for providing communication support for interconnection, intercommunication and interoperation among application federates;

the federal execution support environment unit is established on the bottom layer communication support system and used for providing standardized service support for integration and cooperation among application federal members;

and the federal execution support environment interface module is used for connecting the application federal member with the federal execution support environment unit.

In particular, the federated execution support environment unit includes a plurality of federated execution support environment agent modules.

In another aspect, the present invention provides a dynamic product collaborative development method based on a federation mode, the method at least includes the following steps:

establishing an application federation, wherein an application federation member applies for establishing the application federation to a federation execution support environment unit;

adding the application federation, wherein the application federation member to be added into the federation is added into the federation after approval of all application federation members already added into the federation;

and (4) quitting the application federation, wherein the application federation member ready to quit the application federation passes the approval of all application federation members who have joined the application federation and quits the application federation.

In particular, the establish application federation step includes the following substeps:

4.1 an application federate member submits a federate establishing application to a first federate execution support environment agent module to which the application federate member belongs;

4.2 the first federal execution support environment agent module approves the received application;

4.3 the first federal execution support environment agent module issues examination and approval notice to other federal execution support environment agent modules;

4.4 other federal execution support environment agent modules examine and approve the received examination and approval notice;

4.5 other federal execution support environment agent modules inform the first federal execution support environment agent module of the examination and approval condition;

4.6 the first federal execution support environment agent module collects the received examination and approval conditions;

4.7 the first federal execution support environment agent module requests the federal object model from the applied federal member;

4.8 applying the federate to upload the federate object model to the first federate execution support environment agent module;

4.9 the first federal execution support environment agent module generates federal execution data according to the received federal object model;

4.10 a first federal execution support environment agent module deploys the federal execution data;

4.11 the first federal execution support environment agent module transmits the federal execution data to other federal execution support environment agent modules;

4.12 other federal execution support environment agent modules deploy the received federal execution data;

4.13 other federal execution support environment agent modules inform the first federal execution support environment agent module of the deployment situation;

4.14 the first federal execution support environment agent module collects the received deployment condition;

4.15 the first federal execution support environment agent module records the summary result;

4.16 the first federal execution support environment agent module sends the summary result to other federal execution support environment agent modules, and informs the federal execution support environment agent modules to record the summary result in different places; wherein the meaning of the remote record is as follows: from the perspective of the first federal execution support environment agent module, recording in other federal execution support environment agent modules;

4.17 other federal execution support environment agent modules are filed in different places;

4.18 other federal execution support environment agent module notifies the first federal execution support environment agent module of the filing situation;

4.19 the first federal execution support environment agent module collects the received filing conditions;

4.20 the first Federal execution support Environment agent Module notifies the application Federal Member of the build result.

In particular, the Federal application addition step includes the following substeps:

5.1 an application federal member outside the federal submits an application for adding the federal to a second federal execution support environment agent module which the member belongs to;

5.2 the second federal execution support environment agent module makes an application for adding the federal to other federal execution support environment agent modules;

5.3 other federal execution support environment agent modules approve the received added federal application;

5.4 other federal execution support environment agent modules inform the second federal execution support environment agent module of the examination and approval condition;

5.5 the second federated execution support environment agent module collects the received examination and approval conditions;

5.6 the second nexus executes the update record of the supporting environment agent module;

5.7 the second federal execution support environment agent module notifies other federal execution support environment agent modules of updating records;

5.8 updating and recording other federal execution support environment agent modules;

5.9 other federal execution support environment agent modules inform the second federal execution support environment agent module of the recorded updating condition;

5.10 the second federated execution support environment agent module collects the received record updating condition;

5.11 the second Federal execution support Environment agent Module notifies the application Federal member that made the join Federal application of the join result.

In particular, the federating application federation step includes the following substeps:

6.1 an application federal member in a federation provides an application for quitting the federation to a third federation execution support environment agent module to which the application belongs;

6.2 the third federation executes the supporting environment agent module to check the publishing subscription relationship;

6.3 the third federal execution support environment agent module provides an application for quitting the federal to other federal execution support environment agent modules;

6.4 other federal execution support environment agent modules approve the received quit federal application;

6.5 other federal execution support environment agent modules inform the third federal execution support environment agent module of the examination and approval condition;

6.6 the third nation execution support environment agent module collects the received examination and approval conditions;

6.7 the third edition supports the updating of the environment agent module and records;

6.8 the third federal execution support environment agent module notifies other federal execution support environment agent modules of updating records;

6.9 updating and recording other federal execution support environment agent modules;

6.10 other federal execution support environment agent modules inform the third federal execution support environment agent module of the recorded updating condition;

6.11 the third federation execution support environment agent module collects the received record updating condition;

6.12 the third Federation execution support Environment agent Module notifies the application Federation Member who submitted the quit Federation application of the quit Federation result.

The dynamic product collaborative development platform based on the federal mode is provided with a federal execution support environment unit to integrate and collaborate a plurality of application federal members, so that the platform has the functions of dynamic addition and withdrawal. The development period is shortened in the large-scale collaborative development work, and the application effect is good.

The dynamic product collaborative development method based on the federation mode mainly establishes the application federation, adds 3 steps of adding the application federation and quitting the application federation, effectively integrates and collaborates the work of a plurality of application federation members, shortens the development period and improves the work efficiency.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the hierarchical structure of the federated system of the present invention.

Fig. 2 is a working schematic diagram of the federal system of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a FeI configuration federated system for a multi-agent architecture.

Fig. 4 is a schematic view of the federal flow for establishing an application.

Fig. 5 is a schematic view of an add application federation flow.

Fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of an application federation release flow.

Detailed Description

The following detailed description of embodiments of the invention refers to the accompanying drawings.

The invention provides a collaborative product development method of a loose integration mode supporting design, simulation and optimized application (collectively referred to as development application), namely a collaborative development method based on a federal mode. The method mainly comprises two parts: federal-mode-based integration architecture (FIA) and FIA specifications.

The FIA regards each development application as a federal member (Federate), constructs a virtual collaboration organization, namely the Federation (Federate), and utilizes a universal middleware, namely a Federal execution support environment (FEI) to carry out integration and collaboration. The collaborative development system constructed based on FIA/FEI is called a federal system.

As shown in fig. 1, all collaborative work in a federated system is performed on a federated basis, which is a distributed collaborative product development system consisting of several interacting federated members (federates) in order to perform a specific collaborative product development task. To distinguish from the HLA emulation federation, the federation is referred to herein as the application federation.

Members in the application federation interact by sending collaborative events to each other, which are the basic units for interaction in the application federation.

As shown in fig. 2, the FEI is a core component of the FIA, which implements general services required by the FIA, which are defined by the FIA interface specification. In the FIA collaborative development system, the FEI acts like a soft bus, and any product development system, application and management entity thereof can be inserted into the FEI like a plug-in as long as the FIA specification is met, and collaboration is performed through standard services provided by the FEI.

To ensure that various elements in a federated system cooperate properly, the FIA sets forth a series of protocols, all of which constitute the FIA specification. The FIA specification consists of three parts, including: an FIA Object Model Template (OMT), which defines a set of data formatting templates describing various objects in the FIA; the FIA Rules (FIA Rules) define basic Rules which must be followed in the design stage of the federal system and are used for ensuring that various federal members can correctly interact in the operation stage of the federal system; the FIA Interface Specification (Interface Specification) defines standard services supporting interoperability between federates during the operation of FIA, and the FEI is a specific implementation of the FIA Interface Specification. The effects of FIA OMT, Rules, Interface Specification are similar to the effects of HLA OMT, Rules, Interface Specification.

1. FIA object model template

Development resources depended on by different enterprises, different departments and different disciplines are different, and data isomerism is an important obstacle for realizing collaborative development. In order to ensure the successful collaboration, the FIA requires that all types of collaboration data in the federal system must be described by the FIA OMT.

The FIA OMT is identical in form to the HLA OMT and is a set of standardized tables containing various data that will be used in the integration and coordination process. The FIAOMT includes an Application Object Model (AOM) and a Federation Object Model (FOM), wherein the AOM is used to describe collaboration data that one application can produce and collaboration data that other applications are required to provide; the application federation FOM is obtained by combining AOMs of all application federation members and describes various collaborative data that may occur during the application federation run.

2. FIA rules

FIA rules are further divided into federal rules and member rules.

(1) Federal rules:

rule 1 each application federation must have a federated object model FOM that is in a format compatible with FIAOMT.

Rule 2 during the operation of the application federation, interactions between members must be conducted through the FEI.

Rule 3 during the application federation run, all federal members should interact with FEI according to the FIA interface specification.

Rule 4 in application federation, all application-related collaboration data should be described in a member of the federation, not in the FEI.

Rule 5 during the operation of the application federation, at any one time, a certain content of a collaborative event can become input data for a plurality of tasks, but a content of the collaborative event can be generated by only one federation member.

(2) Member rule:

rule 1 members need to implement callback services in the FIA interface specification and perform web services encapsulation on the callback services.

Rule 2 each application federation member must have an application object model AOM that conforms to the FIA OMT specification.

Rule 3 each application federation member must have the ability to receive from FEI the contents of any collaborative event specified in its AOM that it can receive, and submit to FEI the contents of the collaborative event specified in the AOM that it can provide.

Rule 4 each application federation member must have the ability to start, pause, resume, and stop the corresponding application.

3. FIA interface Specification

The FIA interface specification defines standard services that support interoperability between Federal members during operation of the FIA integration system, which is the most diverse part of FIA and HLA. Services of the FIA interface specification can be divided into four classes: application federal management, release subscription management, data receiving and transmitting management and task pushing management.

(1) Application federal management: a set of services for creating, dynamically controlling, modifying and deleting application federation is defined. Table 1 lists the services in the application federal management.

Table 1 services in application federal management

The services in the first, third and fourth groups of table 1 function similarly to the corresponding services in the HLA specification IEEE 1516, except that the federal member is the design, simulation, optimization application, and not just the simulation application. The second group of services is used for requesting the FEI by the application to update development resources required by the application, for example, when a new process joins the application federation, other members can be required to provide a CAx model required by collaboration. The CAx may be CAD, CAE, CAM, CAPD, etc.

(2) And (3) issuing and subscribing management: data interaction is a pillar for collaborative development, and the establishment of interaction relationship is the basis of data interaction. The FIA employs a publish-subscribe mechanism to establish data interactions.

Collaborative events are the fundamental unit of data interaction by the application federation. Collaborative events refer to events that are communicated between each other by federal members for collaborative purposes. From the data structure perspective, a collaborative event is composed of two parts, an event feature and an event content. The event characteristics are provided for the federates for distinguishing descriptions of the purposes of the collaborative events, and comprise a theme and an attribute, wherein the theme is an abstraction of a type of collaborative events with the same purpose and is a classification of larger granularity of the collaborative events, and one collaborative event only has one theme; an attribute is an abstraction of the features of a collaborative event on the same topic, and is a smaller granularity classification of collaborative events on the topic basis, and one collaborative event may have multiple attributes. Event content is data used by federal members for substantive development, and a collaborative event may contain multiple items of content. The FIA does not impose any restrictions on the content of the collaborative event, which may be simple, small data, or a complex, large model, because the data generated in the collaborative design is very complex.

The publish-subscribe management of FIA defines a set of services for establishing, modifying, and canceling publish/subscribe relationships between federates during complex product development. Table 2 lists the services in the publish-subscribe management.

Table 2 publishing services in subscription management

The first set of services in Table 2 is for Federal members to specify to FEI their capabilities to produce events and their requirements for events; the second group is used for modifying the requirements of the subscribers on the events in the process of collaborative development; the third group is used for revoking publish-subscribe relationships.

(3) Data receiving and sending management: data transceiving refers to the process of handing a collaborative event from a publisher to a subscriber, which is in the FIA responsibility of a service in data transceiving management.

To accommodate different situations, the FIA provides two data transceiving modes: a direct transceiving mode and an indirect transceiving mode.

Direct receiving and transmitting: it is the collaborative event that is handed over directly from the publisher to the subscriber in the form of a data stream. The direct transceiving mode has only two operations: and sending and receiving. Sending refers to the process of submitting a collaborative event to the FEI by a publisher; reception refers to the process of a collaborative event submitted by the FEI to a subscriber.

Indirect receiving and transmitting: the publisher of the collaborative event stores the relevant data of the event on the storage area of the local FEI, the stored data is called as a master book, when the data is transmitted to the location of the subscriber, the data is not directly handed to the subscriber, but the data is stored on the storage area of the FEI of the subscriber, a copy is established, and the subscriber can use the data after the data of the copy is stored. The operation of the indirect transceiving mode includes: the method comprises the steps of master creation, master updating, master deletion, duplicate creation, duplicate updating, duplicate deletion and data reading by federal members. When a publisher publishes a collaborative event, a master book of event related data is firstly established on a local storage area, then the data is transmitted to FEI of a subscriber through a network, a copy of the event related data is established on the storage area, the FEI informs the subscriber of an index of the copy after the copy is established, and the subscriber reads the copy from the local storage area according to the index. The FEI keeps track of the state of the data during the lifetime of the collaborative data, and when the publisher updates the collaborative data, the FEI also updates the copy and notifies the subscriber. When the publisher deletes the master data, the duplicate data is also deleted at the same time. Table 3 lists the services in data transceiving management.

Table 3 services in data transceiving management

The first set of services in table 3 are services in a direct transceiving mode and the second set of services are services in an indirect transceiving mode.

(4) And (3) task propulsion management: the collaborative development process is often very complex, it is difficult to plan the precise course of collaborative task execution before the development process is started, the development is often performed in a search, and there are occasions when a development scheme is changed. For this purpose, the FIA has specifically set up a task-push management service, including six aspects: starting, applying, monitoring, controlling, negotiating and ending. Table 4 lists the services in the task push management.

Starting: the application federal member requires the FEI to initiate the process of task push management.

Applying for: and the application federal member submits the information to be monitored to the FEI.

Monitoring: and in the running process of the application federation, the FEI keeps attention to the information applied by the user and timely informs the application federation members.

Controlling: there are member control and FEI control. The member control is the dynamic state that FEI reports the concerned information to the application federate, and the application federate decides the adopted measures according to the specific situation; the FEI control is the operation which is taken when the feI sets a threshold value for monitored information in the FEI by applying a federate and exceeds the threshold value, and when the cooperative data exceeds the threshold value, the FEI automatically takes corresponding measures.

The control measures are mainly global pause, local pause, and global resume and local resume. The global suspension means that all members of the application federation need to suspend work; global recovery refers to the recovery work of all members of the application federation; local suspension means that several designated members in the application federation suspend, and other members continue to work; local recovery refers to the recovery of work by several designated members of the application federation. It should be noted that the global suspension may be followed by a global resume operation, or may be followed by a local resume operation; after the local pause, all members in the local pause can resume working, or partial members in the local pause can resume working.

And (3) negotiation: refers to the process of the related application federate communication solving the problem when the cooperative task has a problem. The negotiation range can be specified, the global negotiation can be specified by all members of the application federation, and the local negotiation can be specified by partial members.

And (4) ending: application federal members require FEI to stop the process of task push management.

Table 4 services in task push management

The FIA interface specification specifies the functionality of interface services, and the FEI is the specific implementation of these services. For the specific implementation form of the FEI, the FIA is not particularly specified, that is, the FEI may have various patterns.

Because the development application is distributed in different places, and the dynamic change of the network topology of the collaborative development system is facilitated, the invention preferably adopts the FEI with a multi-agent structure, namely, one FEI agent is installed on the node participating in the development, all the FEI agents are physically the same and are equivalent in position, the node difference is embodied by a configuration file, and a plurality of FEI agents form one FEI. The number of FEI agents in the system can be increased or decreased at will, and the position can be changed at will without influencing the function of FEI. FEI in this form is shown in figure 3 as the dotted line containing part.

The operation of the federal system requires the support of FED, which is short for federal execution Data (federative Data) file. The FIAFED file is generated from the FOM as the HLAFED file. It records collaborative events that may occur in the application federation. In the whole federation life cycle, the FEI takes the FED file as a bluebook and coordinates the interaction among various federation members. The FOM is substantially the same as the recorded content of the FED file, which is a file directly readable by the FEI generated by the FOM.

In the invention, when the applications are coordinated, an application federation is established by a certain application participating in the coordination, and other applications are added into the federation. The application in the federation determines the data interaction relationship through publishing subscription, and sends/receives the collaborative event according to the relationship in the collaborative process, so as to realize the purpose of collaboration. In the collaborative process, the user can control the progress of the task as desired.

As shown in fig. 4, establishing an application federation is a process by which an application creates an application federation instance from a FEI application. Since the FEI herein is a distributed multi-agent structure, multiple negotiations and approvals are required, and multiple co-inventories are required. The main content of the approval is whether the application federation allows establishment.

As shown in FIG. 5, during the application federation work, new applications may be dynamically added to the federation to participate in collaboration. Since all FEI agents will be registered when the application federation is established, all application federation in the system can be seen on any FEI agent, and new applications can be added to the corresponding application federation as required. However, to avoid false operation, adding a new application to the application federation requires approval of all existing applications to be added.

As shown in fig. 6, when an application has failed in collaboration, the application may be dropped from the application federation to which the collaboration corresponds. When an application exits the application federation, no publish-subscribe relationship exists in the application federation in connection with it. In addition, to avoid malfunction, all applications also need to be approved to exit.

The above description is only for the preferred embodiment of the present invention, but the scope of the present invention is not limited thereto, and any changes or substitutions that can be easily conceived by those skilled in the art within the technical scope of the present invention are also included in the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the protection scope of the present invention shall be subject to the protection scope defined by the claims.

Claims

1. A dynamic product collaborative development platform based on a federal model is characterized in that the platform comprises a bottom layer communication support system, a federal execution support environment unit, a plurality of federal execution support environment interface modules and a plurality of application federal members; wherein,

2. The federal model based dynamic product collaborative development platform of claim 1, wherein the federal execution support environment unit includes a plurality of federal execution support environment agent modules.

3. A dynamic product collaborative development method based on a federal model is characterized by at least comprising the following steps:

4. The collaborative development method for dynamic products based on a federated scheme as recited in claim 3, wherein the build application federation steps include the following substeps:

4.16 the first federal execution support environment agent module sends the summary result to other federal execution support environment agent modules, and informs the federal execution support environment agent modules to record the summary result in different places;

5. The collaborative development method for dynamic products based on a federated scheme as recited in claim 3, wherein the federating step includes the following substeps:

6. The collaborative development method for dynamic products based on a federated schema as recited in claim 3, wherein exiting the application federation step includes the following substeps: