ISI-An environment for the engineering use of general purpose simulation languages

Present day approaches to discrete event simulation can be broadly classified as using either special purpose data-driven simulation systems or general purpose simulation languages. Although the latter embrace a far wider range of applications and offer much greater flexibility in modeling for a particular application, their user base is restricted by the high level of expertise required. An Expert System interface to general purpose simulation languages, ISI (the Intelligent Simulation Interface), is presented here. Models are constructed and simulation runs are performed in an integrated environment comprising interactive menu-driven graphics, a knowledge base system and a general purpose simulation language. The features of ISI include hierarchical model construction, interactive experimental specification, automatic code generation, run-time animation and interactive graphical post-processing of results. An example case study is presented illustrating the main aspects of ISI. The ISI interface is shown to extend a general purpose language into an intelligent simulation environment.