SDML: a Strictly Declarative Modelling Language

SDML is a modelling language with the following features:

• Knowledge is represented on rulebases and databases
• All knowledge is declarative
• Models can be constructed from many interacting agents
• Complex agents can be composed of simpler ones
• Object-oriented facilities, such as multiple inheritance, are provided
• Temporal facilities are provided, including different levels of time
• Rules can be fired using forward and backward chaining

SDML is implemented in Smalltalk by Steve Wallis in consultation with other members of the Centre for Policy Modelling. It evolved from a non-declarative modelling language implemented by Scott Moss.

If you want to know more about SDML, then you might like to read the following CPM discussion papers:

• CPM-96-09 (Logic, Reasoning and A Programming Language for Simulating Economic and Business Processes with Artificially Intelligent Agents) for an informal introduction to SDML.
• CPM-94-04 (Efficient Forward Chaining for Declarative Rules in a Multi-Agent Modelling Language) for a more technical description of some of SDML's features and their implementation.
• CPM-97-16 (SDML: A Multi-Agent Language for Organizational Modelling) for a description of SDML as a tool for organisational modelling.

If you want to find out about models implemented in SDML, then you might like to read some of the following discussion papers:

• CPM-94-02 (Evaluating Competitive Strategies)
• CPM-95-05 (A Formal Preference-State Model with Qualitative Market Judgements)
• CPM-96-10 (The Introduction of Learning into the Modelling of Boundedly Rational Economic Agents using the Genetic Programming Paradigm)
• CPM-96-11 (Modeling R&D Strategy as a Network Search Problem)
• CPM-95-12 (Modelling the Process of Market Emergence)
• CPM-97-17 (Combining Evolutionary Computing Techniques to Find Credible Qualatative Descriptions of the Demand-Side of Markets)

An SDML tutorial is now available. Click here for details.

For information about the different releases of SDML, such as the features of the current release and how to obtain upgrades, click here.

There is a mailing list for users of SDML. Click here for details.