Prophesy gives you the opportunity to simulate SOA or network environments for day-to-day management optimizations allowing you to check planned investments before you spend. Through the use of simulation, you will be able to answer questions such as these:
In addition to system modeling, Prophesy can be also be used to simulate practically any other work flow problem Prophesy was first introduced to the market on 8/1/93. The current version is 3.0
While Prophesy only requires MS/Windows 3.1 or above, a 386, 486DX or Pentium, with a minimum of 4 Mb of memory, you will be surprised at the extent of features provided-especially when compared to expensive packages which require use of high end UNIX workstations.
FEATURE COMMENTS/EXPLANATION Fully integrated Visual, You need not exit the program to perform Interactive, Modeling all stages of simulation: Model Interface Construction, Verification, Run, and Analysis. Can simulate any workflow Not limited to simulation of environment Routers/bridges/Gateways, etc. It can also simulate the entire system workflow, including data entry speeds, off-system processes, etc.
FEATURE COMMENTS/EXPLANATION Graphical Model Construction 44 Pre-defined Icons. Icon selection via via drag-and-drop icons and scrollable bar. User-defined icons can Dialog Windows also be used. All definitions can be entered There's no need to learn a simulation via prompted panels. language to build a model. Optionally, you can enter definitions directly. Toolbox Menu Most functions only one-click away.
FEATURE COMMENTS/EXPLANATION User definable Profiles You can create personalized resource performance profiles for each component in simulation. Sample profiles for Ethernet, Token Ring are provided. Model Setup Wizard Assists in fast creation of models. Multi-resources can be defined A single Icon can represent one or many as Loosely Coupled or Tightly (up to a 100) actual components. Loosely Coupled clusters. coupled components operate independently. Tightly coupled components work together on a single unit of work. E.g. Effects of adding an extra Server can be seen by simply changing the number of resources each Icon represents. Global, procedure and Message Variables can be used to represent system base variables. conditions and attributes. E.g. Message codes, etc. Message's size, priority, Those message attributes may vary transaction, and state values according to dynamic conditions. can be set programmatically. User Exits Simulation procedures can be extended by linking to user-developed Spreadsheet applications, or user developed DDE-Server programs written in any DDE compliant language, such as C. Priority and round robin based This provides the ability to simulate message scheduling. Up to message priorities based on transaction three priority levels type or based on Client's supported per queue. Multiple characteristics. input queues per resource supported. Supports several statistical Poisson, Normal, Negative exponential, distributions. Hyper-exponential, Uniform distributions supported. Input from system analyzers Via Empiric distribution, message possible. frequencies are taken from an ASCII file. You must convert the output of protocol analyzer to the ASCII format expected by Prophesy. Several messages generation Messages can be generated over a specified options. period of time, or up to a specified maximum number. Discardable events based on Enables simulation of congestion time of wait in queue. situations where packets may be lost.
FEATURE COMMENTS/EXPLANATION Ability to fix the random Useful for comparison of different models stream for comparative under same set of message arrivals. simulation runs. Allowance for recording and The simulation run can be recorded, and replaying of simulation; the recording can be re-run by user as either continuously or at many times as wanted. Useful for step-trace speed. presentations or for detail study of run. Ability to reset statistics. Used to prevent initial bias conditions. Autoreset feature also available. Multiple auto-run features You can leave the machine running multiple with consolidated statistics. replications of a run during the weekend. The simulation will run as many times as specified automatically. The selected results of each run are automatically stored for later analysis. Run Options Wizard. With Prophesy you can run the simulation at analytical speed (real-time display of partial results), or Fast Forward (results are only shown at end of run). This Wizard helps set parameters for four possible run speeds. Stop simulation on Maximum # Run simulation for pre-specified duration messages, Maximum Ticks, User or until a given condition is met. command, or from procedural condition
FEATURE COMMENTS/EXPLANATION Allowance for dynamic up/down Suitable for simulation of system resource state change. fallback/recovery situations. Graphical representation of While running simulation at analytical Resource and Queue utilization speed, there are bars representing each in real time resource utilization. Useful to understand the workload dynamics of a system. Oscilloscope function Real-time histograms of Resource utilization, Queue utilization, and Message delay averages. Animation of Message Flows Ability to view messages traversing the system. Also ability to filter out messages to view based on message's transaction/state characteristics. Allowance for statistics reset Helpful to eliminate initial bias on steady state. conditions. Interactive analysis of Even as the simulation runs, you can watch statistical results via the partial numeric results updated. After graphical representation of simulation ends, graphical representation results of results is provided.
FEATURE COMMENTS/EXPLANATION Run status log Messages generated by the model are stored for later viewing. Messages can also be logged to file. Summary results file Selected accumulated results are stored in exportable to other programs. a Comma-Separated-Value ASCII file, readable by spreadsheets. Cut and Paste transfer is also possible. Message Trace For debugging purposes, you may obtain a message-by-message trace of a run. Trace indicates times and characteristics of every message handled during the run. Message trace can be filtered based on message transaction/state and on message's Source/Destination. Model Cost Summary function. Calculates the total cost (Capital and Recurrent) of a model given the unit costs specified in the model's resource profiles. Embedded Confidence Analysis This integrated feature is useful to feature. determine if enough runs have been made to obtain a statistical meaningful sample. If not; this facility recommends how many more runs and what run durations are necessary.
FEATURE COMMENTS/EXPLANATION Comprehensive on-line Help. Context-sensitive help. Interactive Tutorial. Callable from Help Menu. Step by step model construction tutorial Usage Data Base Callable from Help Menu. This help-like document contains helpful hints and answers to FAQs. Embedded Notes Editor The model can be fully documented without exiting Prophesy. Full Printing Capabilities All model components and results can be printed. There is also a Print Preview feature. Several other sample models Sample models representative of typical and profiles included workflow and system environments. Sample models are fully explained in the manual.
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