[Help-glpk] Re: XML Result Output

[Robert Fourer]

Hi Paul,

    We agree with your observations:

> A problem all solvers face is the non-uniform output from the solver.  We
> are constantly faced with reading a text file, that is not always the same
> depending on feasibility, and trying to extract the results.  I've been
> amazed that nobody has built an XML output from any commercial or open
> source solver so standard XML parsing routines are available for extracting
> and recording the results.  I would like to see an XML output option to aid
> in application integration.

There are actually a number of people who have recognized that this is a
serious problem, and there is quite a bit of work on this problem coming out
from different sources.  We encourage you to visit:

     http://senna.iems.northwestern.edu/xml

where you will find a lot of information on this topic.

  Our own solution to the problem, called FML, is an XML-based format for
linear and integer programming instances.  We are planning on an initial
release, which will support glpk among other solvers, in a few weeks.  When
publicly released it will be open source.  If you'd like to take a look at a
pre-release schema and API documentation, let us know.

Leo Lopes, address@hidden
Kipp Martin, address@hidden
Bob Fourer, address@hidden