Complex simulation experiments made easy

Warnke, Tom and Uhrmacher, Adelinde M. (2018) Complex simulation experiments made easy. In: Winter Simulation Conference (WSC 2018), 09-12 Dec 2018, Gothenburg, Sweden. Proceedings, published by IEEE, pp. 410-424.

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Abstract

Diverse methods for complex simulation experiments can contribute to developing and gaining insights into simulation models, for example simulation-based optimization, sensitivity analysis, or statistical model-checking. An effective tool for conducting simulation experiments must be highly flexible to support such a broad range of experimental methods. Furthermore, to facilitate reproducibility and communication of simulation experiments, an effective tool for simulation experimentation must yield experiment descriptions that are easily portable, executable, and human-readable. In this tutorial we introduce SESSL, a domain-specific language for setting up simulation experiments. SESSL is flexible and extensible, and experiment descriptions are executable, often succinct, and can be executed reproducibly across machines and operating systems. Based on a few examples, we demonstrate how SESSL can be leveraged to easily conduct complex simulation experiments while reusing existing software and methods, and how SESSL’s capabilities can be extended and combined with arbitrary simulation software via bindings.