3. 3. System Development and Support Environments

These will provide the network-based software development tools and environments needed to build the advanced user interfaces and the information- intensive National Challenges themselves.

• Rapid System Prototyping: These consist of software tools and methods that enable evolvable software. These consist of the tools and methods that enable the incremental integration and cost effective evolution of software systems. Technologies include tools and languages that facilitate end-user specification, architecture design and analysis, component re-use and prototyping; testing and on-line configuration management tools; and, tools to support the integration and interoperation of heterogeneous software systems.

• Distributed Simulation and Synthetic Environments: These software development environments provide the specialized underlying support mechanisms for the creation of synthetic worlds, which can integrate real as well as virtual objects, in terms of both their visual as well as computational descriptions. Methods include distributed simulation algorithms, geometric models and data structures, tools for scene description, creation, and animation, and integration of geometric and computational models of behavior into an integrated system description.

• Problem Solving and System Design Environments: These environments provide the techniques that support the software and system design process through the use of automated tools, with particular emphasis on maintaining flexibility and tailorability in tool configurations to enable organizations to tailor their support environments to their needs. Examples include efficient algorithms for searching huge planning spaces, more powerful and expressive representations of plans, operators, goals, and constraints, and the incorporation of efficient methods to facilitate scheduling and resource allocation. The effects of uncertainty must be taken into account as well as the effects of goal interactions.

• Software Libraries and Composition Support: These software tools and methods support the development of common architectures and interfaces to increase the potential for reusability across multiple underlying models of computation, the diversity of programming languages in use, and the varying degree of assurance provided by software components. Important elements of this area include the development of the underlying methodology, data structures, data distribution concepts, operating system interfaces, synchronization features, language extensions, and other technology to enable the construction of scalable library frameworks.

• Collaboration and Group Software: These tools provide support for group cooperative work environments that span time as well as space. Methods include shared writing surfaces and "live boards," version and configuration management, support for process and task management, capture of design history and rationale, electronic multimedia design notebooks, network-based video conferencing support, document exchange, and agents serving as intermediaries to repositories of relevant multimedia information. The technology should be developed to make it possible to join conferences in progress and to be automatically brought up to date by assistants (agents) with memory.

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