The environment
introduction
model
software
example
hypermedia
conclusions
references
appendix
Given the importance of participant communication in
a business process redesign effort,
embedding business simulation models in hypermedia
provides in a natural way the information context
needed for exploring alternatives and taking decisions.
With Intranets becoming more popular, the World Wide Web
has proven to be a popular access point for many applications.
The hush library and its extensions offer
a rich environment for developing
hypermedia applications and dynamic Web documents
[Applications].
The hush library originated as a C++
interface to the GUI scripting environment
provided by Tcl/Tk [Hush].
Tcl/Tk offers an extensible script language
with powerful graphics and window programming
utilities.
A number of extensions to hush have been written,
including the SIM and BPSIM libraries
as well as libraries encapsulating multimedia
facilities.
The hush Web component provides a
collection of (inline) data viewers for the hush
Web browser.
It supports full SGML and style sheets
to specify dynamic layout properties in a declarative way [Animate].
Also applets are supported,
which are Tcl/Tk scripts augmented with the functionality
of hush applications.
Applets are the building blocks of active Web documents.
By defining a script interface for application-specific
C++ classes, application functionality may be embedded
in a Web page as an applet.
As illustrated in the example,
our approach to providing hypermedia and Web support
employs this feature,
both to reduce the time involved in modelling and
to present a graphical representation of the model
and its execution to the user.
introduction
model
software
example
hypermedia
conclusions
references
appendix