Discrete Event Simulation in Interactive Scientific and Technical Computing Environments

The integration of discrete event simulation methods into Scientific and Technical Computing Environments (SCEs) extends their functionality and opens new ways for a convenient interactive modelling and simulation. Because of the wide range of algorithms provided by SCEs, it also offers lots of possibilities for solving complex problems with simulations in an uniform environment. The paper discusses general approaches and presents their realization by the example of a MATLAB-GPSS toolbox prototype. 1 Introduction Interactive Scientific and Technical Computing Environments (SCEs), like MATLAB [7], Octave [1], SciLAB [2] etc., become more and more important in many application areas and in education [5],[4]. While SCEs were only interactive front ends for numerical and visualisation libraries in the past, modern SCEs are complex computing and programming environments. They provide lots of different algorithms, an interactive way of working and a powerful programming language. These feat..