[Project-managers] [Coin-slb] Google Summer of Code

[Ted Ralphs]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 11:08 AM, Horand Gassmann <Horand.Gassmann at dal.ca>
wrote:

> Did any of the ideas from last year get developed, even partially? I am
> most interested in the modeling languages and modeling interfaces from last
> year's list
>

These are not from last year, they are from 10 years ago :)! And as far as
I know, none of it has happened.


> COIN-OR and MATLAB Interface. Create an interface similar in spirit to the
> proposed "Spreadsheet add-in to COIN-OR solvers" project, but between
> COIN-solvers and MATLAB ​using mex. Use ​OSMatlab.cpp which currently
> supports linear, integer, and quadratic programs. Extend to nonlinear.
>

There is a Matlab toolboox that can be used to interface with COIN-OR
solvers: https://www.inverseproblem.co.nz/OPTI/. Also, one of my students
who just graduated is now working at Mathworks so we have an inside track
on what they are working on and could possibly partner with them.


> Start work on an open-source modeling language. This could go in several
> directions. One possibility is to extend the current project, FlopC++ see ​
> http://projects.coin-or.org/FlopC++ in two ways. First extend the project
> to support nonlinear programming. Second, extend the project to write the
> instance in OSiL format see​http://www.coin-or.org/OS/
> documentation/node31.html so it easy to link the problem instance with
> both linear and nonlinear solvers. Another, more difficult directions, is
> to develop an algebraic modeling language from scratch.
>

I guess this is largely moot now, since we have Pyomo, JuMP, PuLP, CMPL,
etc.


> "CMPL", COIN-OR Mathematical Programming Language. AMPL and GNU Mathprog
> can be used with the COIN-OR solvers. For AMPL the AMPL library is used to
> read in .nl files produced by the proprietary AMPL binary; for GNU
> Mathprog, the user has to compile a solver binary including the GLPK
> library which is licensed under the GNU GPL. This is unsatisfactory in the
> long term for two reasons, first, the GNU GPL is incompatible with the CPL
> and hence there can never be official binaries distributed by COIN-OR which
> include support for GNU MathProg. Second, while COIN OR has a large number
> of high quality solvers, a high level modelling layer is missing. This
> project would provide a sensible starting point, either interfacing to COIN
> Osi or to COIN OS. Interfacing to the latter would allow extension to
> nonlinear problems later on. Reimplementing the technically well-documented
> GNU MathProg language for COIN would provide a great first step.
>
> To me the last two are basically the same thing, and there are lots of
> synergies with the first one. I would be interested in helping out on any
> of them, as one of the mentors.
>

OK, please add your name to the list of mentors and to the extent possible,
add ideas. I can also try to transfer what still seems relevant in the area
of modeling languages.

Cheers,

Ted
-- 
Dr. Ted Ralphs
Professor and Interim Department Chair
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Lehigh University
(610) 628-1280
ted 'at' lehigh 'dot' edu
coral.ie.lehigh.edu/~ted
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