Model-solver integration for autonomous and intelligent model-solution : a web services approach

Abstract

Complex mathematical models are increasingly adopted for corporate decision-making, and ordinary users are becoming more involved through institutional decision-making process. Because of technical complexity and changeability of the mathematical model instances, difficulties arise in supporting complicated model solution processes and in maintaining new models with existing solvers (i.e., problem solving algorithms). Moreover, with advent of the drastic growth of the World Wide Web and the prevailing trend of information systems outsourcing, the models and solvers are developed distributed across internal and/or external networks. Distributed models and solvers are frequently based on different modeling practices and/or different system platforms, and thus make it more difficult for the users to understand and apply those models and solvers to their problem-solving tasks. This dissertation proposes an intelligent model-solver integration framework that facilitates an intuitive and user-friendly model solution process and evolutionary model maintenance. Specifically, for intuitive model solution, the framework gives a model management system the ability to suggest compatible solvers of a model autonomously without direct user intervention. In addition, it solves the model by matching model parameters with solver parameters intelligently without any serious conflicts. Thus, the framework would improve the productivity of institutional model solving tasks by relieving the user from the risk of erroneous application of a solver to syntactically and semantically incompatible models, and by reducing the burden given by the considerable learning process of model and solver semantics. As a vehicle for integrating the models and solvers, we adopt the Web services technologies which have been highlighted as a way of integrating distributed and heterogeneous applications. Based on the lighted-weighted and widely-accepted standards, the Web services technologies...