Next generation simulation environments founded on open source software and XML-based standard interfaces

During the Winter Simulation Conference 2001 the OpenSML-project was presented and started. The OpenSML-project is based on the Simulation Modeling Language (SML^TM) and is an open source, Web-based, multi-language simulation development project guided by a consortium of industrial, academic and government simulation consultants, practitioners and developers. For the simulation community, the open source movement represents an opportunity to improve the quality of common core simulation functions, improve the potential for creating reusable modeling components from those core functions, and improve the ability to merge those components using XML, HLA and other simulation community standards. This paper extends the OpenSML-project by using universal, language independent XML-descriptions and code generators for converting OpenSML-models to programs in Java, VisualBasic or C++. This would be the first time a simulation model could be transferred between different platforms without manual changes.