Developers

The next few sections describe the API, developing models with SimKit and making contributions.

Introduction

SimKit is designed to be easily extensible. Adding new calculations, formulas, data, outputs, simulations and models is standardized, facilitating development by many users.

Layers

The structure of SimKit is divided into five layers:

• Data

• Formulas

• Calculations

• Simulations

• Outputs

All five layers are combined to make a model. Data that the model uses is handled by the Data layer. The Formulas layer takes care of all of the formulas used in the Calculations layer. Data and formulas can be used in more than one calculation. Outputs of calculations are handled by the Outputs layer. Finally the Simulations layer handles running simulations.

Registry

All layers have a registry that collects all of the elements in that layer. The registry serves several purposes.

• It restricts layer elements from being registered twice. Once an element is is registered, another element cannot be registered with the same name.

• It allows quick transfer of the layer and all of its elements from one part of the model to another. Calculations need access to formulas, data and outputs. And simulations need access to calculations.

• It allows meta information to be attached to elements in a layer. Data have values but also uncertainty, so a value is stored for each element in the data registry, but the data element’s uncertainty is also stored as meta.

Model

The model loads and saves the layers, initializes and makes updates to layers, validates itself and executes commands. There can be many SimKit models with different combinations of layers and different commands. SimKit can be extended with new variations subclassed from the base model and layer classes to create new features and functionality.