[Coin-discuss] RE: Open-source Modeling Languages

[Ronald Hochreiter]

I personally like the following rather recent open-source Python-based
convex optimization modeling tool, which has not been mentioned so far (or
did I miss something?).

http://cvxmod.net/

which is a modeling layer for:

http://abel.ee.ucla.edu/cvxopt

Regards,
Ronald

On Di, 27.11.2007, 18:01, coin-discuss-request at list.coin-or.org wrote:
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>    1. RE: Open-source Modeling Languages (Hart, William E)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:12:38 -0700
> From: "Hart, William E" <wehart at sandia.gov>
> Subject: RE: [Coin-discuss] Open-source Modeling Languages
> To: "Discussions about open source software for Operations Research"
> 	<coin-discuss at list.coin-or.org>
> Cc: maj at northwestern.edu, bradbell at seanet.com,
> 	h-sheng at northwestern.edu
> Message-ID:
> 	<54246FD42F98AA4389A44EA140FF5F9704F9794F at ES21SNLNT.srn.sandia.gov>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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>
> Although most of this thread has focused on licensing issues, I wanted
> to second Sebastian's observation that there is real utility in an
> open-source modeling language.  Even in my pseudo-industrial role at
> Sandia, this frequently comes up; customers want the features of a
> modeling language, but they are often scared-off by the licensing
> costs/requirements.
>
> I am hoping that an alternative to FlopC++ will be available shortly.
> Leo Lopez and I have independently developed Python modeling tools.
> These leverage Python's expressive scripting language to support an
> object-oriented semantics that is reasonably natural (I won't claim it's
> as clean as something like AMPL).  As with FlopC++, the user can
> leverage the flexibility of a complete programming language to develop
> complex models.
>
> I was personally motivated to protype this capability in Python because
> (a) I have become frustrated with the limitations of AMPL (the
> commercial modeling tool that we have available within Sandia), (b) my
> customers don't want to pay for a commercial modeling tool anyway, and
> (c) developing this capability in a mature scripting language freed me
> from much of the grungy parts of managing a new modeling language.  [OK,
> (d) I am quite familiar with Python, which has a very clean syntax that
> works well in this context.] So, while this doesn't provide a customized
> syntax for optimization, it does provide a flexible basis for building
> up optimization modeling capabilities.
>
> Leo and I are working on legal issues related to the release of our
> software, the merge of these capabilities into a single Python
> framework, and the potential integration of it into COIN-OR. Hopefully,
> the code will be available within the next few months...
>
> --Bill
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coin-discuss-bounces at list.coin-or.org
>> [mailto:coin-discuss-bounces at list.coin-or.org] On Behalf Of
>> Sebastian Nowozin
>> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:21 AM
>> To: Discussions about open source software for Operations Research
>> Cc: maj at northwestern.edu; bradbell at seanet.com;
>> h-sheng at northwestern.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Coin-discuss] Open-source Modeling Languages
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> On Nov 20, 2007 5:35 PM, Kipp Martin
>> <kipp.martin at chicagogsb.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > > [...]
>> > > The OS folks can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems
>> that the XML
>> > > file acts more like the .nl file that AMPL produces (as an
>> > > intermediate format between AMPL and a solver) than an
>> MPS file. I
>> > > doubt most people have ever looked at a .nl file. It is produced
>> > > transparently by a higher level layer and they never see it.
>>
>> > Exactly! OSiL is a representation for an instance as opposed to the
>> > higher level model.  We don't expect people to really look
>> at an OSiL
>> > file. But if they did I think it would be a lot more
>> transparent then
>> > nl or mps.
>>
>> But then, the question of a natural and reasonably powerful
>> open-source modeling language becomes more pressing; having
>> nice intermediate problem format like OSiL/OSrL and cutting
>> edge solvers like Ipopt, CBC or Bonmin is not going to
>> benefit a lot of users if they cannot develop good models
>> quickly in a language suited to the task, at least not the
>> non-programming users.
>>
>> I have taken a look at FlopC++ and it looks really nice,
>> especially for going from a rapid prototype directly into a
>> working component of a software; but I find it hard to
>> imagine it as standard form to exchange/discuss/publish
>> models in due to the compilation dependency.
>>
>> (As one being not involved at all with COIN-OR and only from
>> a user perspective, so I'm sorry if I trip on anyone's toe.)
>> If one would want to fill this gap, extending FlopC++ to
>> support nonlinear optimization might be one way to go, as it
>> is already well integrated with COIN.  Asking kindly the
>> author of GLPK for relicensing of the MathProg part of GLPK
>> under the CPL and making it a larger subset of AMPL would be
>> another option; if the latter is done within OS, all solvers
>> who could read OSiL would profit from this in the future.
>>
>> Sebastian
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