A component based implementation of agents and brokers for design coordination

NASA's mission design coordination has been based on expert opinion of parametric data presented in Excel of PowerPoint. Common access is required to more powerful design tools supporting performance simulation and analysis. Components provide the means for inexpensively adding the desired functionality. An Information exchange was developed to provide the physical models required to perform performance analysis of mission designs. The exchange product is continuous polymorphic model data over finite time intervals. Using Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) components, information brokers were developed to provide controlled access to the products. Each access is a persistent contextual transaction specific to a design team. Information agent Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) were developed to translate information requests, search among the brokers, retrieve the exchange products and ultimately generate high level model information such as state or attitude. An in-process dual component interface was developed to provide direct access from office productivity tools to the agent DLLs.