The Integrated Simulation Environment (Simulation Software of the 1990s)

The availability of good software tools is vitally important to practitioners of simulation. The purpose of this paper is to identify significant improvements that will be made in simulation software in the next 10 years. While based upon review of ongoing research efforts in programming systems, a paper such as this is necessarily speculative. Substantial research effort is already underway. Numerous papers—even entire books—describe current research and comment upon trends for the future. Since most of the current research in programming systems is being conducted in other problem contexts, we must look outside the discipline of simulation for most of our examples. In doing so, we must be careful to assess the applicability of such examples to simulation, for techniques that are successful within a narrow focus may not be readily extended to such a broad discipline as simulation. There is great cause for optimism: it appears likely that simulation practitioners of the future will work in an environment comprised of well-integrated software tools. The integrated software environment of the 1990s will make present state-of-the art simulation software tools look as primitive as the building of simulation models entirely in high-level languages like Fortran looks today.