Ken Webb - Symposium on Complex Systems Engineering

Under construction

This page contains detailed information on how to obtain the UML and Xholon models described in Ken Webb's paper for the Symposium on Complex Systems Engineering to be held in January 2007 in California.

You will need a Java virtual machine installed on your computer, version 1.4.2 or higher. You can download either the J2SE JRE (runtime only) or the full J2SE JDK development environment. The JRE is sufficient to execute the models in the paper.

The open-source Xholon runtime framework and modeling tool is a free download available through sourceforge. Download either Xholon_0_4.zip (Windows) or Xholon_0_4.tar.gz (Linux).

The UML and Xholon files for the models described in the symposium paper are available as a zip file. Note: new version uploaded November 30 14:00 EST to fix a compatibility issue with Rcs_GP_MM (Model 3).

The draft of the paper is entitled UML Modeling of Finite State Machines and Molecular Machines, and is available through the main symposium website, under Ken Webb.

A free MagicDraw reader will allow you to examine the models in their original UML form. Click on "Download MagicDraw Reader" under "See Also". You will need to register before beginning this download. MagicDraw is not required to actually execute the models.

You can read a more detailed description of the Xholon project.

The following are some brief instructions on how to download, install and run the models:

  1. Download the Xholon tool. Install it using the instructions in README.txt included with the download.
  2. Download the zip file containing the models described in the symposium paper. Unzip this into the same Xholon directory as the Xholon tool. All of the files go into existing directories.
  3. Run Xholon using the instructions in the main README.txt file. The simplest approach is to double-click on the xhnGUI Windows shortcut file (xhnGUI) or Linux desktop file (xhnGUI.desktop) to start up the Xholon GUI. Alternatively run xhn.bat 1 (Windows) or ./xhn 1 (Linux).
  4. Once the GUI is started, load the FSM model (Model 1 and Model 2 in the paper) by selecting File --> Open --> xmiapps --> Rcs_GP_FSM --> Rcs_GP_FSM_xhn.xml .
  5. Expand the Model node to observe the initial structure of the model. Compare this with the description in the paper.
  6. Expand the Controller node, and click on Start. The model will run for a few seconds and will then produce some results in the Xholon/statistics directory. Look in the most recent ..._rcsSymStats.csv file in that directory. This file can be imported into almost any spreadsheet package, and then graphed.
  7. Press the Refresh node under Controller. Re-examine the Model to see what has changed.
  8. Repeat for Rcs_GP_MM (Model 3 in the paper) and Rcs_GP_MM_NoSymbols (Model 4 in the paper).