Question-answer inputs to a simulation program generating system

Abstract

One of the objectives of a research effort at the Naval Postgraduate School is the realization of a "simulation program generating system" to produce accountable computer programs from natural language descriptions of simulation problems. The basic part of the system being developed is a FORTRAN program for translating input text into a representative data structure. Previous work has resulted in the capability to translate the data structure for a simulation problem into an English text description and a GPSS computer program. The purpose of this thesis was to supplement the above with an interactive question-answer scheme that generates the simulation problem data structure. The resulting GPSS "simulation program generating system" is capable of handling a variety of simple queuing problems.