TITLE:
Migrating a Desktop Simulator of a Chemical Process to the Cloud
AUTHORS:
Salaheddin Odeh, Mohamad Shaban, Ahmed Qutob
KEYWORDS:
Cloud Computing, Process Simulator, Object-Oriented Software Engineering, UML, User-Interface Design
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Computer and Communications,
Vol.2 No.8,
June
23,
2014
ABSTRACT:
This
paper shows how a desktop simulation can be migrated into its cloud equivalence
using Windows Azure. It is undeniable that simulators are expensive and
cost-intensive regarding maintenance and upgrading, and thus, it is not always
feasible to buy such a simulator. Therefore, it will be of great significance
if we have an approach, which provides simulators with services through the
Internet with the aim of making them accessible from anywhere and at any time.
That is, researchers and developers can focus on their actual researches and
experiments and the intended output results. The cloud simulation
infrastructure of this contribution is capable of hosting different simulations
with the ability to be cloned as cloud services. The simulator example used here
mimics the process of a distillation column to be seen as a widely used plant
in several industrial applications. The cloud simulation core embedded in the
cloud environment is fully independent from the developed user-interface of the
simulator meaning that the cloud simulator can be connected to any
user-interface. This allows simulation users such as process control and alarm
management designers to connect to the cloud simulator in order to design,
develop and experiment their systems on a “pay-as-you-go” basis as it is the
case of most cloud computing services, aimed at providing computing services as
utilities like water and electricity. For coding convenience, Windows Azure was
selected for both developing the cloud simulation and hosting it in the cloud
because of the fact that the source code of the desktop simulator is already
available in C# based on dot Net technology. From a software technical point of
view, UML graphical notations were applied
in order to express the software requirement specifications of the distributed
cloud simulation, representing a widespread technology in the object-oriented
design and analysis.