Eveline - discrete systems simulation

Matej Kosik kosik at decef.elf.stuba.sk
Tue Jul 8 17:25:01 UTC 2003


Hannes Hirzel wrote:
> 
> It would be nice to have some explanation in the documentation
> how your implementation differs from the simulation framework
> given in the purple book and why.

I will try to search the dark corners of our school in order to find
that book. At the time I had it in my hands, I read only its parts
concerning the Smalltalk language itself and some basic classes.
I skipped everything else (graphics, ...).

As soon as I have the book, I will add some comparison of
Eveline and the Purple Book's simulation framework to the
Eveline's documentation. (I guess that there will be somewhat
similar, i.e. supporting event-driven simulation, general-purpose).

> 
> A Morphic or otherwise graphical animation using your framework would be 
> nice.
 >
 > Generally I might consider using your framework some time in the future
 > (e.g. for teaching about simulation). However Morphic as a whole may be
 > as well considered a simulation framework (with a clock ticking and
 > trigger methods, so I would probably look into that because simulation
 > most often means as well visualization.)

I tried to keep Eveline-Core and Eveline-Queuing packages as simple as
possible. They do what they should do - simulate. They additionally
support "simulation reports". If you have "Eveline-Queuing" installed,
you might try

	ComputerSystemSimulation start1

(what it does is described in the bottom of the comment
  to ComputerSystemSimulation class)

Eveline-* does not provide any support for visualization.
It is impossible to do so, because I can't guess what and how
the user want to visualize. So I left it upon him.
See for example

	ComputerSystemSimulation start2
or
	TelephoneConnectionSimulation start2

(what it does is described in the bottom of the comment
  to TelephoneConnectionSimulation class)

I now see that I should say:

- what are simulation reports, how Eveline-* treats them
   and how they can be customized (for user specific
   simulation Entities).
- how to work with PlotMorph

> 
> In the citation list I would add some more references. Implementation
> of your stuff done in other languages; other simulation frameworks
> done in Squeak (e.g. Diego Gomez Deck's).

I have found the following interesting projects

- Microcosms (framework for Multi-Agent based simulations in Squeak)
- Manzana (Really simple physics simulations with Morphs)

Yes. I see that it would be beneficial to refer and compare it with
Eveline. They are not rivals.

- Eveline-Core is a framework for discrete simulations (entities are
   able to SCHEDULE events for other entities within that simulation
   world).
- Eveline-Queuing: a support of simulation of queuing systems based
   on Eveline-Core.

 > Generally I might consider using your framework some time
 > in the future (e.g. for teaching about simulation).

Now I see that it would be perhaps beneficial to translate our 13
school assignments from Slovak to English. Two of them:

   - ComputerSystemSimulation (assignment number 1)
   - TelephoneConnectionSimulation (assignment number 4)

were implemented and are part of the Eveline-Queuing package.

Thank you for suggestions.
-- 
Matej Kosik <http://altair.dcs.elf.stuba.sk/~kosik>
UIN: 300133844




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