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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