Re: [eclipse-clp-users] Begginers Querry

Hi Nishant,

 From your questions, it would seem that you are not familiar with 
constraint programming, or programming in Prolog (ECLiPSe is Prolog with 
extensions), you really need to learn these before you think about 
tackling complex problems, especially if you intend to use an approach 
that will combine constraint programming and MIP.

The ECLiPSe website (eclipseclp.org) provides links to various materials 
that you may find useful. In terms of introduction to ECLiPSe and 
Constraint Programming, you may want to refer to the books listed under 
the Books section in:

http://eclipseclp.org/reports/index.html

The following section (Introductory Material) also contain various 
introductory materials (slide for talks, etc.).


On 26/05/2011 15:09, nishant raj wrote:

> 1. How to feed xls data in EClipse...like in GAMS we use database and push
> the xls file or directly upload it....

ECLiPSe does not provide any specialised reader for Excel files (I 
assume that is what you mean by xls). Like other programming languages, 
ECLiPSe provide I/O facilities to read files, which you can use to read 
in the Excel files.

The more important question is not how to read the file, but what do you 
want to do with the data you read in? Unlike GAMS, where you can read in 
some predefined formatted data files (which I assume what these xls 
files are), and then just apply a solver to solve it, you need to read 
in data and construct the problem model using ECLiPSe, before you can 
solve it.

The introductory books should give you some guidance on how you can do 
this. Some of the code examples in

http://eclipseclp.org/examples/index.html

will also illustrate this, but you should learn at least something about 
ECLiPSe/Prolog before looking at these examples.

> 2. As every program compile and then run ...in other progamming languages
> like C.C++,JAVA...i know how to compile..but how to run..what exactly QUERY
> is used for...

This is a very basic question about Prolog. A query is how you "run" a 
Prolog program, it is like calling a procedure in a more conventional 
language like C.  Again, you should read some introductory material on 
ECLiPSe and/or Prolog.

One possibility is the ECLiPSe tutorial (available from the website, but 
also comes with the ECLiPSe distribution). This introduces you to 
various libraries in ECLiPSe, and there is a chapter on Prolog, but this 
might be rather dense if you have no knowledge of Prolog at all, so you 
may want to also read something like a Prolog textbook that is intended 
specifically to teach Prolog.

>     Now, suppose we want to write a code for sudoku solving...then how user
> will input his data after compilation ....and suggest some good links to
> study more basics...

Again, ECLiPSe provides the I/O facilities, as in other Programming 
Languages, that will allow you to read in such data. Alternatively, you 
can also provide the data via a GUI, using for example the Tcl/Tk or 
Java Interfaces to Prolog. I suggest starting with the basic I/O 
facilities first, and again, such topics will be covered by the 
introductory books to Prolog or ECLiPSe.


> 3. Can we solve standalone MILP problems with COIN-OR using Eclipse.? how
> give me some light on this matter

I am not sure what you mean by "standalone MILP problems". Do you mean a 
MILP problem specified as a MPS (or some other format such as LP) file? 
Yes, the ECLiPSe interface for MILP solver (eplex) will allow you to 
read in a MPS or LP formatted file and then solve the problem. However, 
if this is what you want to do, there is little reason to use ECLiPSe.

Normally, you will specify the problem model you want to solve in 
ECLiPSe, perhaps by reading in raw data files (rather than a pre-defined 
specification of a problem like MPS format), and then solve it.

> 4. How coin-or interface works in Eclipse.

Firstly, ECLiPSe has an interface to MIP solvers -- the eplex interface. 
This interface will work with various different solvers, including 
solvers in the COIN-OR projects, e.g. CBC/CLP.

As for your question, I am not sure what you are asking. I assume you 
are not asking about the implementation details of the eplex interface.

If you are asking how you can program using the eplex interface, the 
ECLiPSe tutorial has a chapter on eplex, which introduce some of the 
most basic facilities of eplex to get you started.

Cheers,

Kish

>
> Thanks guys...Eagerly waiting for your replies.
>
>
>
>
>
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