Dependencies, Demons, and Graphical Interfaces in the Ross Language

This Note is one aspect of RAND's investigation of the utility of knowledge-based artificial intelligence techniques to help solve deficiencies that exist in large-scale military simulations. It explicitly identifies the source of many inconsistency problems in object-oriented simulations, presents a general methodology for solving three classes of inconsistencies, offers solutions implemented as extensions to the ROSS object-oriented simulation language, and supplies guidelines to aid a simulation developer in the use of these new capabilities. In an object-oriented simulation system, the program entities and processes correspond closely to those objects and activities being simulated. Nevertheless, many additional computational tasks must be programmed that have no analogy in the modeled world. The goals of this Note are to identify and categorize some of these "artifactual" activities and describe automatic programming aids that reduce the programmer's burden of handling artifactual processes.