Discrete simulation software: a survey on taxonomies

In studying by simulation, choosing an appropriate software would be a difficult task because many are available. On the other hand, few researches focus on classification of simulation tools/languages and their comparison. This paper makes a survey on taxonomies of discrete simulation software and then presents six taxonomies for them. The first taxonomy is in different approaches for worldviews, which includes event scheduling, activity scanning, three‐phase and process interaction. The second one is based on how the software handles entities and the third one is to have simulation software with (without) some programming capabilities. The fourth taxonomy is based on how discrete simulation software aids in the construction of user’s applications. The fifth taxonomy is related to executing the model and sixth one is concerned with the level of autonomy used in elements of simulation models. Afterwards, more than 60 simulation software are evaluated in the taxonomies provided. Finally the major challenges for next generation simulation packages are presented, based on the observations derived from the evaluation.