MICROSIMULATION MODELS USING WEB SERVICES

Istvan Molnar
School of Business, Department of Computer and Information Systems
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania,
Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, 17815, U.S.A.
E-Mail: imolnar@bloomu.edu

KEYWORDS: Microsimulation, Socioeconomic
applications, Microsimulation software, Web
services,

ABSTRACT
This paper describes and analyzes new Webbased
application development software
technologies, which can be applied to develop
microsimulation models.
First, the application field and some of its major
characteristics and requirements are introduced. After
a short introduction and classification of
microsimulation models, basic technological
approaches for microsimulation model
implementations are introduced. Next, two major
technologies, the database-oriented and the weboriented
approaches are discussed in details. The
Web services approach, as a very promising new
technology, is analyzed in more detail, because of its
potential to develop Web-enabled model bases. The
two major solutions for realizing Web services are
J2EE and .NET. These two technologies are
compared and their impact on microsimulation and
related software technology shortly discussed. Final
remarks conclude the paper.