Introduction to Silk/sup TM/ and Java-based simulation

Silk is a general-purpose simulation language based on the Java programming language. Silk, however, is more than just another simulation language. It is a new standard for creating usable and reusable object-oriented simulation components and models. The Silk modeling language is usable because it represents a unique marriage of familiar process-oriented modeling constructs and the powerful object-oriented features of a general purpose programming language. Silk models are reusable because they are created using professional Java visual development environments that support graphical assembly of self-contained Silk modeling components based on the JavaBeans component architecture. Java's adoption as the standard language for computation on the World Wide Web also means that Silk models can be deployed in ways that exploit this new medium.