Richard A. Kilgore

The future of Java-based simulation

Java-based simulation presents a unique opportunity for revolutionary changes in the process of developing simulation models and in the mission of the simulation software firms that provide tools to support the model development process. Java enables a new vision of an industry populated by application-specific specialists who generate compatible and reusable simulation components. These object-oriented components can be developed using inexpensive, professional-quality Java development environments and executed using Internet browser software. This discussion is an overview of the features and future benefits of Java-based simulation. It is targeted at experienced simulation practitioners who understand the limitations of existing tools and the need for object-oriented, standardized and reusable modeling software.

Open source Simulation Modeling Language (SML)

The Simulation Modeling Language (SML/sup TM/) is an open source, Web-based, multi-language simulation development project guided by a consortium of industrial, academic and government simulation consultants, practitioners and developers. The vision of an open source simulation software initiative is to leverage the unique communication and distribution opportunities created by the Internet to open the development of simulation software to a worldwide community of talented software developers, researchers and modelers. For the simulation community, the open source movement represents an opportunity to improve the quality of common core simulation functions, improve the potential for creating reusable modeling components from those core functions, and improve the ability to merge those components using XML, HLA and other simulation community standards. This paper describes the SML software, the goals of the SML organization and relates the origins, philosophy and procedures of the open source movement to the objectives and needs of the simulation community.

Simulation Web services with .Net technologies

The concept of Web services represent the next generation of architectures for interoperability between software applications based on software industry standards. Presented in the paper is an overview of Web services, a discussion of the use of Web services in the context of simulation and a demonstration of the use of Web services for simulation as implemented in the Microsoft .Net software development and execution framework. The paper focuses on the vital role of industry standards in the definition and implementation of Web services and relates this to the opportunities and challenges for similar standards and benefits for interoperability in simulation software.

Multi-language, open-source modeling using the Microsoft .Net architecture

This presentation reports on the opportunities and limitations of Microsoft .Net architecture for supporting the development of a common, open-source, multi-language platform for simulation software support. While the paper supporting the presentation focuses on the underlying foundation within the .Net architecture, the conference presentation represents an important milestone in the OpenSML project corresponding to the first release of a common library supporting the C#, VB.Net and Java/J# languages.

Silk, Java and object-oriented simulation

Silk(R) is a set of Java classes that support object-oriented, general-purpose simulation and animation using the Java programming language. Silk enables the development of complex, yet manageable simulations through the construction of usable and reusable simulation objects. Silk objects are usable because they express the precise behavior of individual entity-threads from the object perspective using familiar process-oriented modeling constructs and the object-oriented features of a general purpose programming language. Silk objects are reusable because they can be easily archived, edited and assembled using professional Java visual development environments that support the JavaBeans component architecture. This introduction describes the fundamentals of designing and creating a Silk model.

Silk: object-oriented simulation with Java, Silk, and open SML .NET languages

This tutorial is for advanced simulation developers engaged in the use of object-oriented programming languages and libraries that support object-oriented, discrete-event simulation. The tutorial is based on generic structure of the OpenSML simulation libraries in the Net languages VB.Net, C# and J# and the Silk libraries in Java. The focus of the tutorial is on the use of consistent design patterns that encourage usability, reusability and cross-language compatibility. Particular emphasis is placed on designing and coding object-oriented simulation models to properly transfer simulation control between entities, resources and system controllers, and on techniques for obtaining a one-to-one correspondence between simulation code and system behavior.

Object-oriented simulation of distributed systems using Java(R) and Silk(R)

An object-oriented modeling infrastructure using the Java-based, Silk simulation classes is defined that enables the simulation of multitasking, distributed systems using symmetric multiprocessors. The simulation infrastructure is being used to evaluate alternative architectures for embedded, distributed systems. We show how the underlying structure is adapted to several different applications, including various Internet applications. The paper describes the infrastructure, its robustness, and the application of the model to produce insights for a system under design. The simulation infrastructure enables a high fidelity representation of the internal complexity of the application on each processing node, the operating system behavior, and the disks and network. The simple yet powerful representation leverages the use of the Silk entity-thread architecture to achieve a simulation architecture that maps to the actual system architecture in both conceptual design and processing sequence. The model has been validated through instrumentation of the evolving target system.

Modeling nonconventional sampling schemes with a combined discrete-continuous language

Combined discrete-continuous simulation languages can pro vide a convenient and flexible structure for modeling a wide variety of nonconventional sampled-data control problems. Using the language SIMAN, it is shown how to model fixed, random, and signal-dependent nonconventional sampling schemes in cluding a nonsynchronous multirate system with a PID controller.