The Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) focuses on facilitating simulation interoperability across government and non-government applications worldwide. A number of standards are emerging that will individually have great impact on the development and operation of simulation systems, as well as interoperation across simulation systems and command and control systems. More importantly, when these standards are applied together, they represent a set of capabilities and technologies which can revolutionize the simulation industry, radically improving the way we develop and deliver interoperable systems.
Each of the following standards addresses specific needs that have been shortcomings in M&S interoperability in the past: (1) the Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) provides a way to represent the coalition battle management doctrine within a Command and Control environment to enable unambiguous expression of plans and orders for live, constructive, and robotic forces; (2) the Military Scenario Definition Language (MSDL) provides a common way to describe a scenario, including initialization information, that can be shared across multiple systems; (3) the Base Object Model (BOM) standard provides a way to identify piece parts of a simulation or model that can be used as building blocks for composing larger model sets; (4) the Simulation Reference Markup Language (SRML) provides a platform-independent way to represent behavior models which can be rendered quickly and easily (at runtime) by a simulation; and (5) the Distributed Interactive Simulation Extensible Markup Language (DIS-XML) initiative provides a way to represent DIS Protocol Data Units using XML to enhance interchange of dynamic entity state and entity interactions across diverse systems.
This paper gives a brief overview of these key standardization efforts, and explores how each standard can interplay with other standards. The paper lays out an abstract architecture for demonstration of the composition of prototype versions of these products to show the community how they will be employed in the future and what benefits will accrue. The paper proposes a plan of action to implement the architecture for demonstration and discussion at the Spring 2007 Simulation Interoperability Workshop.