My recent description of the key components of model intercomparison projects was done both as input to metafor deliberations and as preparation for a visit by Simon Cox. We spent a bit of that visit time discussing the UML describing such projects (which appeared in the previous post). In doing so, we managed a few simplifications and fixes to my UML …

Image: IMAGE: static/2008/06/18/anatomy-of-a-mip2.png

The key points to notice are

  • fixing the association to be in keeping with usual use of UML (in particular, noting that a composition association implies that if the parent instance is deleted, the child instances should also disappear).
  • making more clear the association between RunTime and Experiment by adding the explicit conformsTo association.
  • moving the ModelCode to be an adjunct to the RunTime so that the RunTime directly produces the Output.
  • (update, woops missed the important one): using the view stereotype to indicate the classes which we believe will form launch points for discovery.