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Software engineerng applied to discrete event simulations

Authors:

Kenneth N. McKay,

John A. Buzacott,

Christopher J. StrangAuthors Info & Claims

WSC '86: Proceedings of the 18th conference on Winter simulation

Pages 485 - 493

https://doi.org/10.1145/318242.318481

Published: 01 December 1986 Publication History

Abstract

Developing simulation programs shows many similarities with classical system software development tasks. In simulation one is often concerned with allocating and deallocating resources. Two forms of deadlock — the 'deadly embrace' and 'apré-vous' — can be troublesome to simulators unless they know how to avoid them in the first place. Critical races and time dependent functions are other characteristics shared between simulation and systems programming. If simulation is viewed and taught as data processing, the simulator will be ill-prepared for writing simulation code.

Most simulations in industry are not written by skilled software developers. There is good reason for this: the simulation writer must ultimately understand the problem, its features and the managerial concerns that lead to the requirement for the simulation. However, simulation writers with no software training are poorly equipped for developing simulation code that is easy to design, debug, verify, maintain and explain. A number of simple modern software engineering techniques which are described in this paper can be applied to simulation programs in a practical way to improve both the quality of the simulation and the productivity of the simulator.

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Cited By

Carnahan JReynolds PBrogan D(2005)Simulation-specific characteristics and software reuseProceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation10.5555/1162708.1163176(2492-2499)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1162708.1163176
Carnahan JReynolds PBrogan D(2005)Simulation-specific Characteristics and Software ReuseProceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, 2005.10.1109/WSC.2005.1574543(2492-2499)Online publication date: 2005
https://doi.org/10.1109/WSC.2005.1574543
Shannon R(1998)Introduction to the art and science of simulationProceedings of the 30th conference on Winter simulation10.5555/293172.293175(7-14)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1998
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/293172.293175
Show More Cited By

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Software engineerng applied to discrete event simulations

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WSC '86: Proceedings of the 18th conference on Winter simulation

December 1986

890 pages

ISBN:0911801111

DOI:10.1145/318242

Editors:
James R. Wilson
Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN
,
James O. Henriksen
Wolverine Software Corp.
,
Stephen D. Roberts
Regenstrief Institute

Copyright © 1986 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGSIM: ACM Special Interest Group on Simulation and Modeling

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 December 1986

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Cited By

Carnahan JReynolds PBrogan D(2005)Simulation-specific characteristics and software reuseProceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation10.5555/1162708.1163176(2492-2499)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1162708.1163176
Carnahan JReynolds PBrogan D(2005)Simulation-specific Characteristics and Software ReuseProceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, 2005.10.1109/WSC.2005.1574543(2492-2499)Online publication date: 2005
https://doi.org/10.1109/WSC.2005.1574543
Shannon R(1998)Introduction to the art and science of simulationProceedings of the 30th conference on Winter simulation10.5555/293172.293175(7-14)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1998
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/293172.293175
Shannon RCrain R(1992)Introduction to simulationProceedings of the 24th conference on Winter simulation10.1145/167293.167302(65-73)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1992
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/167293.167302
Ogle MBeaumariage TRoberts CNelson BKelton WClark G(1991)The separation and explicit declaration of model control structures in support of object-oriented simulationProceedings of the 23rd conference on Winter simulation10.5555/304238.304446(1173-1179)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1991
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/304238.304446
Balmer DPaul RSadowski RNance R(1990)Integrated support environments for simulation modellingProceedings of the 22nd conference on Winter simulation10.5555/328885.328979(243-249)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/328885.328979
McKay KLaube J(1988)Search and rescueProceedings of the 20th conference on Winter simulation10.1145/318123.318221(381-388)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1988
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/318123.318221
Sharma R(1988)Modular design for simulationSoftware—Practice & Experience10.1002/spe.438018100318:10(945-966)Online publication date: 1-Oct-1988
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/spe.4380181003
Kostelski DBuzacott JMcKay KLiu X(1987)Development and validation of a systems macro model using isolated micro modelsProceedings of the 19th conference on Winter simulation10.1145/318371.318682(669-676)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1987
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/318371.318682

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