Incorporating simulation into a design environment

The author describes a methodology that provides a simulation capability for certain kinds of software environments. The required simulation functions are partitioned into a number of well-defined functional roles that represent basic units from which discrete event simulation programs can be constructed. A novel approach to constructing modeling environments is used. To insulate the users from many of the software integration details, the environment uses explicit knowledge of its own structure to support the user in selecting and adapting the system components. The knowledge is in the form of wrappings, which are expert interfaces to the programs, tools, and other resources in the environment. This approach is a simple and powerful mechanism for making many different kinds of resources available to work together in an integrated way. The author defines the functional roles in an existing set of discrete event simulation support functions and describes wrappings for them. He also shows how ordinary differential equation solvers fit into the same framework