Building an Object Model of a Legacy Simulation

Abstract : The Department of Defense proclamation that all simulations comply with High Level Architecture (HLA) standards prompted the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Analysis Center (TRAC) to investigate the feasibility of including Janus in future HLA Federations. Janus, one of the Army's most extensively used models, is an stochastic high-resolution simulation. As a procedural legacy model coded prior to the rise of object-oriented programming, there are considerable challenges for Janus to meet HLA requirements. This thesis proposes a methodology to produce a HLA Simulation Object Model (SOM) for procedurally implemented legacy simulations. The result obtained by using this methodology is a general object model and one or more SOMs. The general object model provides a full object-oriented template of the legacy simulation that is unrestricted by the model's code or the minimum requirement for interoperability. The SOM is derived from the general object model. This research indicates that procedural legacy simulations can comply with the HLA SOM requirement. In order to achieve this compliance, it is advantageous to first develop the general object model. Additionally, it is important to include an analyst in the SOM development process if federation outputs will be used for analysis. SOM development facilitated the identification of additional steps necessary to make Janus HLA compliant. This effort will continue with a review of the SOM by Janus code experts and work on a software service that will allow Janus to communicate with other simulations in the HLA specified format.