What is RCE?

RCE is an Open Source distributed, workflow-driven integration environment. It is used by engineers and scientists to design and simulate complex systems (e.g., aircraft, ships, or satellites) by using and integrating their own design and simulation tools.
An overview about RCE and some of its application fields gives this survey article.
If you're interested in contributing to RCE please don't hesitate and contact us. The source code is distributed as a zip archive along with each release. We will provide general public access to our source code repository soon.
Follow us on for latest news concerning releases, talks, related science etc. Check our YouTube channel for screen casts and other nice stuff concerning RCE.

Cite us

If you use RCE in your research project, please cite either the software itself or our reference publication in SoftwareX:

Brigitte Boden, Jan Flink, Niklas Först, Robert Mischke, Kathrin Schaffert, Alexander Weinert, Annika Wohlan, and Andreas Schreiber. "RCE: an integration environment for engineering and science." SoftwareX 15 (2021): 100759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2021.100759.

Brigitte Boden, Jan Flink, Robert Mischke, Kathrin Schaffert, Alexander Weinert, Annika Wohlan, and Andreas Schreiber. (2019). RCE (10.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3691675.

You can obtain the preprint of the SoftwareX-article from arXiV.

Work with us

We are always open to working together with users to extend RCE and to apply it to new use cases. For this, we often participate in collaborative research projects. Please contact us at rce@dlr.de.

News

Release 2.5.0

Changelog

  • A new component for submitting cluster jobs was added
  • Major rework of the optimizer component
    • Updating a pre 2.5.0 workflow file containing an optimizer component will remove all previous method configuration
  • improved workflow updater
  • improved logging for failing python component
  • improved error handling in optimizer component
  • added …

Release 2.4.2

Changelog

  • added new workflow component "Input Provider": user can define input values for other components, like text, numbers, or files
  • improved workflow editor handling
    • improved support for short cuts
    • fixed minor issues
  • improved logging of workflow status during execution
  • improved workflow execution in batch mode
    • improved performance
    • enabled workflow execution …

Release 2.4.1

Changelog

  • added boolean channeltype in Python component
  • added mechanism to support wildcard entries in publishedComponents configuration
  • added configuration for rce-tmp folder
  • fixed various bugs in SimpleWrapper component (i.e. regarding the use of input channels in pre/post process)
  • fixed bug in converger
  • minor fixes and improvements

Release 2.4.0

Changelog

  • Major rework of the network/communication system; changes include:
    • significant performance improvements
    • simplified setup of ad-hoc networks; in typical use cases, clients only a single line of configuration to connect to a network
    • simplified handling of firewalled systems and subnets
  • reduced supported languages to English to avoid language mixups …

Release 2.3.8

Changelog

  • add updating mechanism for workflow files containing at least one Python component (it is not upwards compatible)
  • fixed bug in Simple Wrapper component (occurred if used as first component within an workflow)
  • fixed bug in Python component regarding array inputs
  • fixed bug in SQL component regarding array inputs

Release 2.3.7

Changelog

  • added new concept for sensitive workflow configuration values
  • re-designed Excel workflow component for stability and usability purposes
  • added support for Optimizer component (Dakota) in Linux versions
  • added view for cluster job monitoring
  • fixed bug in configuration GUI of Simple Wrapper component (occured only in Linux versions)
  • fixed bug in …

Release 2.3.6

Changelog

  • added option to create a workflow examples project (new -> other -> RCE)
  • fixed problems and inaccurate problem descriptions in optimizer component
  • fixed some gui issues in optimizer component
  • fixed minor issues

Release 2.3.5

Changelog

  • fixed bug that caused an error in running a distributed workflow
  • fixed bug in merger component
  • fixed bug in merger and converger components gui
  • workflow data browser nodes can now be deleted
  • removed context menu entries for sorting of entries in workflow data browser
  • ixed minor issues

Release 2.3.4

Changelog

  • added Design of Experiments component (test state)
  • added sorting order for workflow data browser
  • added toggle buttons for workflow data browser
  • added default explaining script in python component
  • added storage for persistent settings
  • textfields for commands in sql and simplewrapper component now resize when view gets resized
  • connection lines …

Release 2.3.3

Changelog

  • added Converger component (test state)
  • added Merger component (test state)
  • added support for compression data management
  • added filter for workflow components in connection editor
  • added support for Coliny Cobyla algorithm in optimizer component
  • fixed input queue view showing pending inputs of components (shows input in wrong order if a …