Ensuring reproducibility through tool-based simulation process management

For credibility of simulation results, reproducibility of simulation runs is a must. However, reproducibility requires a thorough management of all data involved in the simulation process. The corresponding management of data can be error-prone and time consuming if performed manually. In this paper we introduce a simulation management approach that ensures reproducibility and traceability of simulation runs as well as improves efficiency of simulation processes by automation of common simulation tasks. We implemented our approach as an Eclipse plugin. We show that information gained by explicit simulation management can be used to automatically organize and archive all necessary data to reproduce a simulation. While our tool was implemented with focus on the network simulator ns-2, our concepts can be applied to other simulation environments, too.