Overview

The BattleBuilder system further demonstrates customization options available for the Discovery Machine development environment. It focuses on using the model building capabilities of the core Discovery Machine Modeler, and coupling it with new graphical interface tools. The BattleBuilder assists experts in recording events that take place during a military conflict.

Extension of Discovery Machine Capabilities

The BattleBuilder's interface is broken into three major components.

• Model Pane—The model pane in the top left allows the user to break a battle down into a hierarchy of events, showing which events contributed to higher level strategic goals.
• Map Pane—The map pane in the top right allows the user to graphically select military units that played roles in the events that took place during a battle.
• Timeline Pane—The timeline pane in the bottom section allows the user to specify temporal data relating to when events took place, as well as creating temporal relations denoting dependencies between events.

The BattleBuilder demonstrates the ability to customize the Discovery Machine Modeler through the addition of completely new customized interface elements. Developers are able to create new graphical interfaces tailored to capturing information specific to a particular domain. This data can then be linked to Discovery Machine's development tools to gain the benefits of hierarchical modeling.

The BattleBuilder also demonstrates the capability to extend the underlying data structures used by Discovery Machine's technology. The basic elements used in hierarchical models have been extended to include the unit and temporal information.

[Note: DMI retains all rights to the name "BattleBuilder"]