[Ns-developers] First Stab at Validation and Verification

[L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk]

One terminology thing that's always bugged me is that, while ns has had
validation tests seemingly forever, talk of regression testing was never
around for ns2. And validating the models vs testing for regressions in
behaviour strike me as slightly different in aim.

validation - is this model behaviour useful and realistic?
regression - is this model behaviour consistently unchanged by code
changes not intended to change the model behaviour?

The scope of the tests for these seems different. But they've
both been lumped under 'validation' to date.

> One of the problems I've run into is that the terminology is confused.  I
> wanted to try and write down exactly what it was that I was trying to
> accomplish and define the terms I was using.  Unfortunately, for example,
> validation can mean different things to different people.  I had imagined
> that ambiguous terminology translated into French, German or Portuguese
> would be a disaster waiting to happen.  I've been known to be mistaken on
> this front, though.  Are there specifics that you found unnecessary or
> overly pedantic after your translation exercise?  I know there are terms
> there to help clarify what I'm *not* doing.