  To harness the potential of advanced computing technologies, efficient (real
time) analysis of large amounts of data is as essential as are front-line
simulations. In order to optimise this process, experts need to be supported by
appropriate tools that allow to interactively guide both the computation and
data exploration of the underlying simulation code. The main challenge is to
seamlessly feed the user requirements back into the simulation.
State-of-the-art attempts to achieve this, have resulted in the insertion of
so-called check- and break-points at fixed places in the code. Depending on the
size of the problem, this can still compromise the benefits of such an attempt,
thus, preventing the experience of real interactive computing. To leverage the
concept for a broader scope of applications, it is essential that a user
receives an immediate response from the simulation to his or her changes. Our
generic integration framework, targeted to the needs of the computational
engineering domain, supports distributed computations as well as on-the-fly
visualisation in order to reduce latency and enable a high degree of
interactivity with only minor code modifications. Namely, the regular course of
the simulation coupled to our framework is interrupted in small, cyclic
intervals followed by a check for updates. When new data is received, the
simulation restarts automatically with the updated settings (boundary
conditions, simulation parameters, etc.). To obtain rapid, albeit approximate
feedback from the simulation in case of perpetual user interaction, a
multi-hierarchical approach is advantageous. Within several different
engineering test cases, we will demonstrate the flexibility and the
effectiveness of our approach.
