Python Dictionary Example

In order to provide a gentle introduction to our interfaces, the examples so far have demonstrated only very basic capabilities. We will now attempt to demonstrate some of the power of our Python interface by describing a more complex example. This example is intended to capture most of the common ingredients of large, complex optimization models. Implementing this same example in another API would most likely have required hundreds of lines of code (ours is around 70 lines of Python code).

We'll need to present a few preliminaries before getting to the example itself. You'll need to learn a bit about the Python language, and we'll need to describe a few custom classes and functions. Our intent is that you will come away from this section with an appreciation for the power and flexibility of this interface. It can be used to create quite complex models using what we believe are very concise and natural modeling constructs. Our goal with this interface has been to provide something that feels more like a mathematical modeling language than a programming language API.

If you'd like to dig a bit deeper into the Python language constructs described here, we recommend that you visit the online Python tutorial.