Toward a language for the flexible observation of simulations

Simulation studies typically imply the generation and interpretation of data. Collecting, storing, and filtering data can be expensive. Therefore, it is important to allow a user to specify these processes flexibly depending on the modeling language, the model, and the objective of the simulation study. An instrumentation language is presented and applied to collect, aggregate, store, and filter data generated during experimentation with models specified in ML-Rules, a rule-based multilevel modeling language for cell biological systems.