Is there any way to get time consumption profile of an AnyLogic model?
I saw this question from Dylan where he did some kind of method profiling : does it comes from an AnyLogic intern tool or from something external? How can I generate it for my model?
It would give me a first approach to understand the weak performance I get from my model but if something more precise exists (like in other discrete event simulation software) I would be happy to learn about.
What Dylan is using there is an application called VisualVM. You can download it here:
https://visualvm.github.io/
Depending on your operating system you can learn how to install it and run it here:
https://visualvm.github.io/gettingstarted.html
And when you run VisualVM, whenever you run a simulation experiment, it will immediately appear in the VisualVM panel automatically. It should be fairly straight forward.
Another tool is Java Mission Control, which comes included with the Java Development Kit (JDK).
To start profiling you start your model but not yet run it. The Java thread of your model will apear in the JVM Browser. You right-click on it and select "Start Flight Recording" and choose how long you want the recording to be. Now you let your model run.
Once the recording is done, you can analyse the profile, which looks something like this:
What options are there for interfacing with / controlling ImageJ/Fiji from another program?
I need to use some image filters that are available in Fiji. However, I cannot have Fiji be the centre of my workflow. I am using another system (scripting language) for that. I must manipulate some data in that other system, apply a filter to an image, get the result, then continue manipulating that image.
What are my options? What features does Fiji provide that make this possible?
In particular, is it possible to do this if the system I am using does not have a Java interface? It does have a C interface, and it can invoke command line programs.
For context: I want to interface Fiji with Mathematica. Mathematica does have a Java interface but it appears to lack support for some Java 8 features that ImageJ requires. I also don't know much Java and I am looking for a simple solution that I can set up quickly, rather than a long-term robust solution that requires a high initial investment.
If you can't run the ImageJ filters through Java integration, you may be able to write the necessary operations into an .igm macro and then get ImageJ to run it in headless mode.
Otherwise, it may be simpler to port the Java code for the particular filters that you need into a more convenient environment. ImageJ is primarily set up for GUI use, and Java/CLI/other integration can get messy very quickly.
I am trying to determine which of these two to buy for my work. I have used SIMULINK but not LabVIEW. Is there anyone who has used both and would like to provide some details? My investigation criteria are the user friendliness, availability of libraries and template functions, real-time probing facility, COTS hardware interfacing opportunity, quality of code generation, design for testability (i.e. ease of generating unit/acceptance tests), etc. However, if anyone would like to educate me with more criteria, please do so by all means!
For anyone who does not know about SIMULINK and LabVIEW - These are both Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) intended for graphical dataflow modelling (and also code generation). These are multi-industrial tools and quite heavily used for engineering design and modelling.
IMPORTANT - I am quite interested to know if SIMULINK and LabVIEW offer real-time probing. For example, I have a model that I want to simulate. If there are variables associated to certain building blocks in that model, could I view them changing as the simulation continues? I know that it is certainly not possible with SIMULINK as it has a step-by-step debugger. I am not aware of anything similar in LabVIEW.
I really have not used LabVIEW and cannot obtain it temporarily as my work internet has got download restrictions and administrative privilege issues. This is the reason why I simply cannot use only NI website to draw conclusions. If there is any white paper available that addresses this issue, I would also love to know :)
UPDATE SINCE LAST POST
I have used MATLAB code generator and will not say that it is the best. However, I hear now that SIMULINK Embedded Coder is the best code generator and almost one of its own kind. Can anyone confirm whether or not this is good for safety critical system design i.e. generating code from safety-critical subsystem models. I know that the Mathworks is constantly trying to close the gap to achieve fully-flexible production-level C/C++ code generation.
I know that an ideal answer would be,"Depending on what you are trying to do, use a bit of both". And interestingly, I think I am heading to that direction. ATEOTD, it is a lot of money and need to be spent "nicely".
Thanks in advance.
I used labVIEW from 1995, and Simulink from 2000. Now I am involved in control system design, and simulation of robotic systems using labVIEW Real Time and automotive ECUs using MATALAB/Simulink/DSPACE .
LabVIEW is focus on measurement systems, and MATLAB/SIMULINK in dynamic simulation, so,
If you run complex simulations, and your work is create/debug complex simulation models of controllers or plants, use Simulink+RealTimeWorkShop+StateFlowChart. LabVIEW has no eficient code generators for dynamic simulation. RTW generates smaller and fastest code.
If your main work is developing systems with controllers and GUI for machines, or you want to deploy the controllers on field, use labVIEW.
If your main work is developing flexible HIL or SIL systems, with a good GUI, you can use VeriStand. Veristand can mix Simulink and LabVIEW code.
And if you have a big budget ( VERY BIG ) and you are working in automotive control prototypes, DSPACE hardware is a very good choice for fast development of automotive ECUS, or OPAL to develope electric power circuits. But only for prototype or HIL testing of controllers.
From the point of view of COTS hardware:
Mathworks don´t manufacture hardware -> Matlab/Simulink support hardware from several vendors.
National Instruments produce/sell hardware->LabVIEW Real Time is focused in support NationalInstruments hardware. There are no COTS full replacement.
I have absolutely no experience with Simulink, so I'll comment only on LV, although a quick read about Simulink on Wikipedia seems to indicate that it's focused mainly on simulation and modelling, which is certainly not the case with LabVIEW.
OK, so first of all, LV is NOT a DSL. While you wouldn't want to use it for any project, it's a general purpose programming language and you should take that into account. I know that NI has a simulation toolkit for LV, which might help you if that's what you're after, but I have absolutely no experience with it. The images I saw of it seemed to indicate that it adds a special kind of diagram to LV for simulation.
Second, LV is not restricted to any kind of hardware. It's a general purpose language, so you can write code which won't use any hardware at all, code which will use or run on NI's hardware or code which will use any hardware (be it through DLL calls, .NET assemblies, RS232, TCP, GPIB or any other option you can think of). There is quite a large collection of LV drivers for various devices and the quality of the driver usually depends on who wrote it.
Third, you can certainly probe in real time in LV. You write your code, just as you would in C or Java, and when you run it, you have several debugging options:
Single stepping. This isn't actually all that common, partially because LV is parallel.
Execution highlighting. This runs the code in slow motion, while showing all the values in the various wires.
Probes, which show you the last value that each wire had, where wires fill the same function that variables do in text based languages. This updates in real time and I assume is what you want.
Retain wire values, which allows you to probe a wire even after data passed through it. This is similar to what you get in text based IDEs with variables. In LV you don't usually have it because wire values are transient, so the value is not kept around unless you explicitly ask for it.
Of course, since you're talking about code, you could also simply write the code to display the values to the screen on a graph or a numeric indicator or to log them to a file, so there should be no need for actual probing. You could also add analysis code, etc.
Fourth, you could try downloading and running LV in a fully functional evaluation mode. If I remember correctly, NI currently gives you 7 days and then 45 days if you register on their site. If you can't do that on a work computer, you could try at home. If your problem is only with downloading, you could try contacting your local NI office and asking them to send you a DVD.
Note that I don't really know anything about modelling and simulation, so I have no idea what kind of code you would actually have to write in order to do what you want. I assume that if NI has a special module for it, then it's not something that you can completely cover in regular code (at least not if you want the original notation), but I would say that if you could write the code that does what you want in C, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to write it in LV (assuming, of course, that you know how to write code in LV).
A lot of the best answer would have to depend on your ultimate design requirements. Are you developing a product? If so, in what stage of development are you? Or are you doing research?
I recently did a comparison just as you are doing. I know LV, but was wanting to move towards a more hardware-scalable option, since NI HW is very expensive in volume. That is, my company was wanting to move towards a product. What LV and NI HW give you is flexibility. You can change code very quickly compared to C. On the other hand, LV does not run on nearly as many different HW platforms as C. So I wanted to find an inexpensive platform that would work well for real-time control and data acquisition, such that if we wanted to sell a product for, say, $30k, our controller wouldn't be costing $15k of that. We ended up with Diamond Systems Linux SBC's. Interestingly, Simulink ended up using the most expensive hardware! It did have a lot of flexibility, and could generate code, as well as model plants and controllers. But then, LV can do that as well.
As Yair wrote, LV has plenty of good debugging tools. One of the more interesting tools that is not so well known is the Suspend when Called option for a SubVI. This allows you to play with the inputs and outputs of a SubVI as much as you want while execution is paused.
MATLAB and Simulink are the defacto standard for control system design and simulation. Simulink controller models can be used for offline simulation in conjunction with plant models, all the way to realtime implementation on embedded targets. It is a general simulation framework with extensive built-in libraries as well as a la carte special purpose libraries, and can be extended through creation of custom blocks (S-function blocks) in C and other languages. It includes the ability to display values in graphs, numeric displays, gages, etc. while a nonrealtime simulation is taking place. Realtime target support from The Mathworks includes x86 (xPC Target) and several embedded targets (MPC555, etc.), and there is 3rd party support for other targets. The aforementioned dSPACE provides complete prototyping controllers including support for their quite powerful hardware. xPC Target includes support for a plethora of COTS PC data acquisition cards. Realtime target support includes GUI elements such as graphs, numeric displays gages, etc.
As I understand it (I have never really used it in anger), LabView only supports NI hardware, and is more hardware-oriented. Simulink supports hardware from multiple vendors, be it for data acquisition, or real-time implementation, but it may require a bit more work for the user to interface to his or her own hardware (less plug & play than LabView). On the other hand, Simulink provides tools to support the whole model-based design process, from modelling & simulation, control design, verification & validation, code generation, hardware-in-the-loop, etc...
Disclaimer: I used to work for MathWorks.
You guys may really be interested in Control Design adn Simulation Module for LabVIEW. It does a lot of simulations and in the future may be competitive to Simulink. I'm not a control engineer but I use it sometimes for simple testing and I'm glad that I don't have to learn Simulink from the beginning to do some work since I'm familiar with LabVIEW philosophy.
I have a complex NAnt build script, which contains a lot of *.build and *.include files with many targets inside, which in their turn are called both via depends and via call. I'd like to have a visual representation in a tree-like form of what calls what. It should also be an easy way to regenerate it because the script is growing further.
Is there any ready-made tool or some API (preferably .NET-based) I can use for this purpose?
There's NAntBuilder although it seems to be expensive (with a free trial). I've never used it personally so I couldn't recommend it either way.
I've not found one, but my general mantra is "get your designer out of my face". Imagine a database diagram in Sql Management Studio or in the EF Design Surface if you've got 30 or 50 tables. Generally my mental map is better organized.
Probably the best way to initially visualize the dependencies is to run the build and watch the task names appear in the output.
I took the time to set up some Unit Tests and set up the targets in XCode, etc., and they're pretty useful for a few classes. However:
I want to test small UI pieces for which I don't want to launch the entire application. There is no concept of pass/fail: I need to "see" the pieces, and I can make dummy instances of all the relevant classes to do this. My question is: how can I set this up in XCode?
I realize I could use another XCode project for each class (or groups of classes), but that seems a bit cumbersome. Another target for each?
I know that you're looking for an approach to testing UI components that doesn't require a fully functional application, but I've been impressed with what the new UI Automation instrument introduced in iOS 4.0 lets you do.
This instrument lets you use Javascript scripts to interactively test your application's interface, and it does so in a way that does not require checking exact pixel values or positions on a screen. It uses the built-in accessibility hooks present in the system for VoiceOver to identify and interact with components.
Using this instrument, I have been able to script tests that fully exercise my application as a user would interact with it, as well as ones that hammer on particular areas and look for subtle memory buildups.
The documentation on this part of Instruments is a little sparse, but I recently taught a class covering the subject for which the video is available on iTunes U for free (look for the Testing class in the Fall semester). My course notes (in VoodooPad format) cover this as well. I also highly recommend watching the WWDC 2010 video session 306 - "Automating User Interface Testing with Instruments".
Well, you cannot call showing a piece of some GUI a testing even if that GUI is a part of a large application. What you can do here is create a separate executable target and write a small tool that reuses GUI components from your application and shows them to you basing on input parameters. This will eliminate the need for many many different targets.
If you still insist on using unit tests, you can show your GUI for some period of time, for example, 10 seconds. So the test case will run until GUI is closed or timeout elapses and each test will take up to N seconds to execute.
This is a good question. I think you actually do not want to use unit tests for those 'visual confirmations'. Personally I usually write little test apps to do this kind of testing or development. I don't like separate targets in the same project so I usually just create a test project next to the original one and then reference those classes and resources using relative paths. Less clutter. And it is really nice to be able to test more complex user interface elements in their own little test environment.
I would take a two-level approach to UI "unit testing":
lthough Cocoa/CocoaTouch are still closer to the Model-View-Controller than the Model-View-ViewModel paradigm, you can gain much of the testability advantage by breaking your "View" into a "view model" and a "presenter" view (note that this is somewhat along the lines of the NSView/NSCell pair; Cocoa engineers had this one a long time ago). If the view is a simple presentation layer, than you can test behavior of the view by unit testing the "view model".
To test the drawing/rendering of your views, you will have to either do human testing or do rendering/pixel-based tests. Google's Toolbox for Mac has several tools for doing pixel-by-pixel comparison of rendered NSViews, CALayers, UIViews, etc. I've written a tool for the Core Plot project to make dealing with the test failures and merging the reference files back into your unit test bundle a little easier.