Integrated Design and Verification of Simulation Programs

One of the more critical problems in computing science today is the rapidly increasing cost of developing and maintaining software for new automated data systems. New software development is generally a standardized process whereby software evolves from an idea to a useful system operating on a computer. The traditional model for a software development project includes feasibility study, requirements analysis, system design, program design, coding, testing, documentation, and implementation. Program design, coding, and testing are relatively well defined activities, but they are rarely straightforward. Involving many iterations among the phases and the activities within the phases, these iterations are a result of the knowledge gained as the system is being generated. We will describe here a different approach to the software development process. This approach, called "top-down modular design," attempts to minimize the numerous iterations of the development cycle. The basic philosophy, similar to that of structured programming, has already been applied to a variety of applications but has not yet been utilized in the general process of constructing simulation programs.