Validating one’s version of Vensim on a per release basis.

[mike]

I am sure the people responsible for maintaining Vensim do extensive and robust tests to ensure each new release is working as per the Manual descriptions of how everything in Vensim should work.

I ‘feel’ 99% sure of this being reality.

How can any Vensim User be 100% sure that their downloaded version of a given Vensim release is in fact acting as it should ?

In order to answer this question myself, I could assemble a suite of Vensim models & applications that use all of Vensim’s functionality, external functions, gaming ..... and run them using a set of extreme scenarios; i.e. letting them run for 10,000 time steps assuming computer memory can handle it. Then I could from time to time download the latest release , run this ‘test suite’ of validation runs and compare the results with those from previous downloaded Vensims.

Could anyone recommend a comprehensive and robust way to do this in order to be 100% sure ?

What would be really nice though, much more than a stocking stuffer mind you, would be for Ventana Systems to make available on the vensim.com website a set of .vdf run files made for a set of Vensim models that are provided in the Vensim/help/models subdirectories such that any/all Vensim Users would be able to be 100% sure that their Vensim runs consistently with how Ventana Systems’ version of Vensim runs for the set of .vdf files provided which would cover robust runs of all the essential functionality of Vensim.

Happy Holidays one & all.

[Administrator]

I'm not sure how to answer this. Do you have suspicions that things are not being calculated correctly?

[mike]

Yes, I have a model I am trying to debug but want to do this on my own.
My independent debugging would be helped though if all the models provided
with Vensim had .vdf files provided too , such that I and all Vensim Users would be able to test
the relevant functionality by validating my copy of Vensim's run of the provided models with yours.
You see I am looking for model runs done by you guys that should match my own runs of
those provided models. I want to see independent validation of the copy of Vensim I am running.


Thanks for the reply.

[Administrator]

If there is a specific model you want the VDF for let me know and I'll generate it for you.

Or explain what the problem is debugging the model as that might be a more fruitful conversation. Email me at vensim@vensim.com if you cannot post details in a public forum.

Tony.

[mike]

Thank you Tony,

Let me get back to you on this next week.

Regards,
Mike

[mike]

If there are parts of a Vensim model I am debugging and would like to look at the source code, which I can't do .....
an alternative is to simply take that chunk of Vensim model and run it with Vensim PLE to get a consisitency check.
In the future I will try to think then post rather than visa versa.

Mike