Hi Aman I've CCed this message to the ascend-sim-users mailing list, hope that's OK with you.
Aman Thakral wrote: > Hello, > > My name is Aman Thakral and I am writing to you from McMaster > University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). I am chemical engineering > student who will be starting a Master's this September. Currently, I > am working on a project to solve a gasoline blending optimization > problem using software agents. We are planning to solve the problem > on a distributed computing network known as SHARCNET > <http://www.sharcnet.ca/>. Ultimately, we would need to invoke ASCEND > routines from a java or C agent. I have questions regarding the usage > of ASCEND and I was hoping that you would be able to answer them. Any > help would be much appreciated. > > - Can we invoke the ASCEND APIs (solver functions etc.) directly a C > or Java code? You can involve ASCEND directly from C code, but we don't currently have any Java interface. We do however have a Python interface, and this has been generated using SWIG, so if Java is important for you, then you might be able to use our Python wrapper as a basis for your Java one. Some useful example code for running ASCEND from C code is available in the directories base/generic/compiler/test and in the file pygtk/simulation.cpp. I'll try to write some introductory documentation for you on this topic. > - Is there a command line stand alone version of ASCEND (similar to > the command line in the Tch/Tk GUI)? The closest thing is the Python API, which you can use for example from 'ipython' for a nice commandline. I would encourage you to use this API. It's not explicitly documented yet, but there is heaps of example code in our Python-based test suite, here: http://ascendcode.cheme.cmu.edu/viewvc.cgi/code/branches/extfn/test.py?view=markup > - How long will ASCEND be supported (ie. still available and > maintained in five to ten years from now)? The ASCEND modelling language has been around since the 1980s. This is an open-source project and noone's making any money out of it, so there aren't any guarantees. But we still have an active project with an active user community, in an area with very few other FOSS alternatives. So I think we probably will still be around in 5-10 years. > - Is ASCEND written to be thread safe? Unfortunately, ASCEND is not written to be thread-safe. When the core engine was being written, this wasn't really an issue that developers were thinking about. You might consider running different ASCEND processes for each simulation you want to run, or else we could work with you to identify thread-safety issues and try to get the ASCEND code to the point where it met your needs on this. This would be a good step forward for ASCEND, so I'd be keen to help out with that. Cheers JP ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Ascend-sim-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ascend-sim-users
