Running agent-based simulations. Unternehmensmodell / Computersimulation.

When running agent-based simulations using ready-made components, one usually faces heterogenity problems both for the agents' implementation and for the underlying platform. To circumvent these kind of hindrances, we introduce a wrapper technique for mapping the functionality of agents living in an interpreter-based environment to a standardized CORBA interface, thus facilitating the task for any control mechanism (like a simulation manager) which just will need to handle one set of commands for all agents involved. This mapping is made by an XML-based definition file. We also have built a generic simulation manager which makes use of agents with homogeneous interfaces, and which can be used to run simple simulations. In a sample session, we illustrate how wrapper and simulation manager do inter-act. Finally, we describe the database interface representing the global Artificial Economy environment in which agents operate. In the Appendix, we give a brief overview of the current installation of the SFB reference computer platform.