The use of Expert-EASE´s `EASE+´ package to develop user-interfaces for mathematical modelling and simulation

The Intelligent Simulation group within Sheffield University´s Control Engineering department is involved in the production of mathematical modelling software to simulate physical systems. Specifically the group has developed a suite of PC-based programs called KEMS (knowledge-based environment for modelling and simulation). KEMS encompasses a wide range of different tasks within a single application and different parts of the system are coded in different languages. Because of this, and the complexity of the application itself, the quality of the user-interface is particularly important. It was therefore decided to construct the user-interface using a specialised front-end builder. The package chosen eventually for this task was Expert-EASE Systems´ EASE+. EASE stands for engineering applications software environment, and it is essentially a flexible graphics database management system which contains an interface development toolbox. EASE+ can be mounted on either PCs or workstations, and as well as being a development tool, it is capable of producing runtime software modules