The best of most worlds: shared objects for multilingual simulation

Computing techniques are increasingly being used in scientific research to tackle a diverse set of problems. An example is complex systems research, which focuses on the use of computer simulations to explore, understand and describe the real-world system under study. These simulations are often sophisticated pieces of software with numerous design trade-offs between performance and ease of development and use. We propose a simulation framework for complex systems simulation that allows each component of a simulation--for example visualisation, or data analysis--to be developed in the most appropriate language. The framework uses the concept of shared objects to communicate data between simulation components. We present here a detailed motivation for multilingual simulations, an outline design and prototype for the simulation framework, and discuss future plans for the framework.