The key barrier to realizing new capabilities in Modeling & Simulation (M&S) is integrating existing M&S assets from such valuable resources such as weapon simulations and mission planning data. In practice, almost 100% of M&S systems are custom software driven by domain and mission-specific requirements. Mission changes result in system requirement change and thus integration of new capabilities is the most significant problem. The promise of component-based M&S systems is to enable developers and end-users to "snap together" new applications by mixing and matching external simulation data and components. A major innovation of this effort is the design of universal M&S data exchange language based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The major capabilities of the M&S data exchange language are (1) new M&S language terms can be added without effecting the reliability of existing terms; (2) term structures can be nested to any level of complexity; (3) any M&S data object can contain an optional description of its grammar. Another major innovation dynamic (run-time) transformation of legacy M&S software interfaces into standards-based services. The result is the ability to adapt quickly to different user and mission demands, while achieving reliability through the reuse of verified components.
Keywords: Modeling And Simulation Language-Based Data Representation Distributed Objects Xml
