Article by: Jim Shiflett (JAMES.E.SHIFLETT@saic.com)
SEDRIS was initiated in 1994 as a program by STRICOM (PM CATT) and DARPA (STOW) dealing with the complex problem of environmental representation and exchange. The long-standing problem of environmental representation was recognized in the mid 1980’s with Project 2851 and the DARPA SIMNET program. Project 2851 was a joint service program lead by the Air Force. Virtual databases was the primary focus of project 2851. The SIMNET program included the additional dimension of networked simulation with both visual and non-visual applications (SAF) working together. Distributed simulation requires a common representation of place, relative to the application view of the common world. A common representation of “place” is a precondition to interoperability. As distributed simulation changed the world of simulation, the addition of Joint (multi service) and Combined (multi country) applications, expanded the complexity of environment representation. SEDRIS has applied the lessons learned from Project 2851 and DARPA work.
The SEDRIS program addressed the tough problems:
- How to deal with the lack of an underlying environmental framework?
- How to get a total set of requirements?
- How to keep the commercial process and proprietary product involved but have an open exchange mechanism to support distributed simulation?
- How to support different views with air, land, sea and space as well as different spatial location (coordinate systems)?
The SEDRIS concept includes the following:
- Support for representation of multiple views of the same place.
- The loss less exchange of data.
- A need for a common data model.
- A practical view with considerations for tradeoffs between design and implementation.
- Collaborative activities between Government, Industry and Academia. The SEDRIS program includes a difference business model with the SEDRIS associates.
The SEDRIS program was designed as a government led program with the maximum participation of industry, the use of international and commercial standards as well as the support of commercial and government products. The SEDRIS organization includes the government management team, the SEDRIS associates and the core team. The management team provides overall direction; the SEDRIS associates provide requirements, collaborative participation and review from their perspective. The core team provides for the review, collection, integration and testing of the SEDRIS core products with recurring releases. The Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) is the lead and sponsoring organization.
The SEDRIS associates make up one of the unique features of the SEDRIS program. They are a widely diverse collection of industry (US and International) and government organizations. The responsibilities of the SEDRIS associates include the following:
- Learning to “speak SEDRIS” with the UML and the enhanced Rumbaugh notation.
- Generation of a “mapping document" from their native format (s) or assigned government format (s) that ensures that the data representation model and coding standard can handle all data requirements.
- Development of software to convert native data into SEDRIS and back to check completeness of the interchange.
- Participation in the SEDRIS associates meetings (SAMs) and associated interchange experiments to exchanges ideas and to cooperatively define and develop SEDRIS technology components.
- Sharing with other associates all non-proprietary utilities and applications that support SEDRIS interchange.
All SEDRIS core products are available. Additional information on the SEDRIS products and a list of the SEDRIS associates is available on the SEDRIS web site http://www.sedris.org/.
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