An object-oriented mathematical modelling system

The object-oriented paradigm has been successfully used in many programming, specification, analysis, and knowledge representation tasks. The strength of this formalism is the flexibility and support it provides for designing subsystems, defining abstract data types and building reusable software components. In this work a new modelling paradigm, object-oriented mathematical modelling, is introduced, where mathematical models and submodels are embedded inside objects and classes, which can easily be assembled into larger systems. Object-oriented mathematical modelling is particularly suitable for implementing large and complex structured models to be used and maintained for a long time. The main concepts of object-oriented mathematical modelling are presented as an extension of the Mathematical Modelling Environment (MME). MME is an attractive software environment for supporting mathematical modelling and algorithm development with an algebraic modelling language related to constraint logic programming. Model classes and objects can be used for defining and managing reusable model components, which can then be assembled into larger models. MME and the object-oriented modelling paradigm are in principle independent of the model type, but the current prototype supports only LP/MIP-models. Models specified in MME can be solved directly using the integrated LP2 linear and mixed integer programming package.