Toolbar
The D-OMAR Toolbar is the entry point to the D-OMAR Developer's
Interface, the suite of software tools used in developing human
performance models or agent-based systems. The Toolbar provides access
to the D-OMAR components designed to assist the developer in managing
large bodies of code, operating the simulator, and providing insight
into agent operation. The D-OMAR Developer's Interface components
accessible from the Toolbar include the Concept Editor, the Procedure
Browser, the Simulation Control panel for controlling execution of the
simulator, and the timeline displays of both current simulation run and
data restored from previous runs.
Concept Editor
The Concept Editor is a graphical editor designed to support the
development and maintenance of the SFL concept hierarchy defining the
objects of a model. A Concept Editor Network window provides a view of
a user-selected portion of the concept hierarchy. The Network window,
with concepts presented as the nodes of the graph, supports the
maintenance of the concept hierarchy by providing operations for adding
concepts to or deleting concepts from the network. The inheritance
among concepts, the links to the parent and child concepts of a
selected concept, may also be modified as required. A history pane is
provided to make it easy to move back and forth between recently
presented focus nodes.
A
Concept Editor Table window provides a table of the slots and
additional specifications for a particular concept. The Concept Editor
Table primarily supports the management of the slots for a concept.
Slots may be added to or deleted from a concept, and the number and
value restrictions, and default value for the slot may be set or
revised. Separate views are provided to present all the slots for the
concept or just the locally defined slots. The editor will flag
inconsistent number or value restrictions.
Procedure
Browser
The Procedure Browser provides several graphical views of the code
designed to support model development and debugging. The views are
designed, in part, to provide insight into the large-scale structure of
the code. One pair of views presents the calling sequence relations
among procedures. The first of the pair shows the sub-procedure calls.
The second shows the inverse of the first, the "who calls" view. The
second pair of Procedure Browser views supports the use of signals, the
publish/subscribe capability of the SCORE language. One view presents a
graph that traces the signals generated by a selected procedure and the
signals generated by the procedures subsequently contacted. The second
view presents a trace of the signals subscribed to by the procedure.
Simulation Control
The Simulator Control Panel provides control over the operation of the
D-OMAR simulator. Once scenarios have been loaded, usually the last
step in bringing up Core-OMAR at a server node, the Control Panel may
be used to select a scenario to run. It may then be used to initiate,
run, pause, and resume scenario execution. A trace pane provides
information on the runtime events of the simulation. The user has
control of the agents for which the information is presented, as well
as the types of events presented in the trace. The event data from a
simulation run may also be saved to disk for later use. Application
developers are responsible for providing event types yielding
information relevant to the operation of a scenario. Very detailed
events recording of the execution of SCORE code is available. During
application development, event tracing, used in conjunction with the
Task and Event Timeline displays can be an important tool to support
model debugging and program verification.
Timeline and Analysis Windows
The D-OMAR Toolbar includes separate entry points for accessing
Timeline and Analysis data. They each provide access to the same
presentation types for the data, the Timeline entry point working from
runtime data and the Analysis entry point working from data restored
from an earlier simulation run. The Timeline and Analysis displays
allow the model developer or analyst to precisely access the detailed
data on the execution of their models during a simulation run. The
displays have proven to be an essential resource for gaining insight
into the operation of and assessing the validity of the models
developed to date.
Two
timeline displays are provided: a Task Timeline and an Event Timeline.
The agents included in the display and the time span covered for each
of the displays may be controlled by the user. The Task Timeline
provides detailed information on the goals and procedures that an agent
is executing. Each horizontal bar of the Gantt-style chart provides
information on one of the agent's goals or procedures. Information
includes the name, start time, and priority for the goal or procedure.
For a completed goal or procedure, the stop time and success or failure
of the procedure is noted. The calling goal or procedure and its
priority are also identified. The Event Timeline display presents event
data by agent. A number of event types are built into the SCORE
language and can always be made available for display. A subset of
these event types provides the data necessary to support the
information requirements of the Task Timeline. The SCORE language also
includes a defevent form that may be used add new event types important
to the scenario being developed. The record-event form is used to
generate the runtime data that is recorded to support this display.
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