Section: New Results

Experimental methodology

In the scientific experimentation process, an experiment result needs to be analyzed and compared with several others, potentially obtained in different conditions. Several tools are dedicated to the control of the experiment input parameters and the experiment replay. In parallel, concurrent and distributed systems, experiment conditions are not only restricted to the input parameters, but also to the software environment in which the experiment was carried out. It is therefore essential to be able to reconstruct this type of environment. This can quickly become complex for experimenters, particularly on research platforms dedicated to scientific experimentation, where both hardware and software are in constant rapid evolution. We study the concept of the reconstructability of software environments and propose a tool for dealing with this problem in [64] .

We have also started investigating the systematic use of Design of Experiments to computer studies (see [61] ). Nonetheless such approach provides results that are much more trustworthy than what is generally done in the parallel and distributed computing community but it also enables to shorten the experiments cycle and to use less computing resources.