Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation
Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation
A specification language to assist in analysis of discrete event simulation models
Communications of the ACM
Distributed problem solving for air fleet control: framework and implementation
Expert systems techniques, tools and applications
CommonLoops: merging Lisp and object-oriented programming
OOPLSA '86 Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications
Artificial intelligence and simulation: an introduction
WSC '86 Proceedings of the 18th conference on Winter simulation
Explanation systems for computer simulations
WSC '86 Proceedings of the 18th conference on Winter simulation
Object-oriented simulation: where do we go from here?
WSC '86 Proceedings of the 18th conference on Winter simulation
Simulation with rules and objects
WSC '86 Proceedings of the 18th conference on Winter simulation
Simulation modeling in an object-oriented environment using Smalltalk-80
WSC '86 Proceedings of the 18th conference on Winter simulation
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An object-oriented style of computation is especially well-suited to simulation in domains that may be thought of as consisting of intentionally interacting components. In such domains, the programmer can map the constituent domain components onto objects, and intentional interactions (e.g. communications) onto message transmissions. However, some events or interactions between real world objects cannot be modeled as naturally as we might like. Improper modeling of these interactions inevitably leads to inconsistent simulation states and processing errors.The research reported in this paper identifies two categories of simulation activities that are unnatural and difficult to implement in object-oriented simulations: (1) scheduling events which depend on the continuous aspect of time; and (2) presenting a graphical display of a simulation so that any changes in the simulation state are immediately visible.Following a discussion of these deficiencies, we present a methodology for performing these tasks that is transparent to the simulation programmer. Our approach utilizes extensions to the Ross object-oriented language allowing a programmer to declaratively specify characteristics of the simulation dealing with time dependent attributes and graphics display strategies. The example presented in this paper demonstrates the many advantages of our declarative approach to maintaining consistency. With these capabilities, we expect object-oriented simulation languages to become increasingly attractive for modeling dynamic systems.