[Coin-discuss] Open-source Modeling Languages

[Sebastian Nowozin]

Hello everybody,

I have been a user of coin software since some time now and I am
steadily impressed by the number of alive, high-quality projects
hosted by COIN-OR.  Thanks for all the hard work.

In my impression COIN has a great selection of high quality solvers
and if for a certain problem the solver can be comfortably be used by
Osi or another "low-level" interface there is no problem.  For
prototyping or testing/experimenting with models however, there seems
to be no real open-source modeling language.

I know about ZIMPL and the AMPL-subset MathProg in GLPK, but they are
limited to linear programs and also the long-term direct integration
with the COIN-solvers has license incompatibilities.  Additionally,
for MathProg, the problem can only be imported but not again outputted
using MathProg (as you can when using GLPK or if you use AMPL+CBC).

Are there any plans or directions for a more powerful open-source
modeling language supporting the features of COIN-OR solvers? (similar
to AMPL, GAMS, MathProg or ZIMPL, but open-source and
license-compatible with COIN projects)

Thanks,
Sebastian