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Status Not under consideration
Created by Guest
Created on Oct 23, 2020

Improve OPL Interfaces by providing dynamically typed API and a “façade” compatible with the .NET framework

Using OPL interface in .Net is cumbersome. Manipulate data elements object and result is far from being trivial.
By example, instantiate an int look like that:

OplDataSource dataSource = new MyCustomDataSource(oplF);

internal class MyCustomDataSource : CustomOplDataSource
{
internal MyCustomDataSource(OplFactory oplF)
: base(oplF)
{
}
public override void CustomRead()
{
OplDataHandler handler = DataHandler;

// initialize the int 'simpleInt'
handler.StartElement("anInt");
handler.AddIntItem(3);
handler.EndElement();

I think that this can be possible to provide a method to do this more naturally:

dataSource.anInt = 3;

Instantiate a tupleset is harder:

// initialize the tuple set 'simpleTupleSet'
handler.StartElement("aTupleSet");
handler.StartSet();
// first tuple
handler.StartTuple();
handler.AddIntItem(1);
handler.AddNumItem(2.5);
handler.AddStringItem("a");
handler.EndTuple();
// second element
handler.StartTuple();
handler.AddIntItem(3);
handler.AddNumItem(4.1);
handler.AddStringItem("b");
handler.EndTuple();
handler.EndSet();
handler.EndElement();

Providing a method like the following is probably easy to do (below is F# code but C# or java is almost the same):

dataSource.aTupleSet =[(1, 2.5, "a");(3, 4.1, "b")];

Modifying a coefficient in a problem base on a value on an other problem is also cumbersome:

double coef = subCplex.GetValue(subOpl.GetElement("Use").AsIntVarMap().Get(i));
IForAllRange forAll = (IForAllRange)masterOpl.GetElement("ctFill").AsConstraintMap().Get(i);
masterCplex.SetLinearCoef(forAll, newVar, coef);

Why not :
master.ctFill<-sub.Use.value;

This kind of construct is possible with LINQ, SQL database client and F# type provider (http://fsharp.org/guides/data-access/). I suppose that this can be possible to wrap the actual OPL, Concert and CPLEX Interfaces to offer similar coding improvement.