Mathematical Sciences: Object Oriented Software Design for Optimization and Inverse Problems

SYMES 9627355调查员和他的同事的目标是通过进一步开发希尔伯特类库(一个用C++编写的面向对象的编程环境)，弥合用于数值优化的“现成”软件包与科学和工程中的复杂应用程序之间往往存在的巨大差距。这种编程方法根据优化算法的自然抽象组件(向量相加、内积等)来表达优化算法，而不会对数据结构和表示施加不必要的约束。另一方面，应用软件可以使用最合适的数据结构、算法和语言(例如，Fortran的各种方言)来编写。编程环境在通用优化代码和应用程序专用代码之间提供了灵活且基本上自动的接口。除了阐述基本类库之外，这项建议的目标还包括实施几种用于大规模优化的现代算法，设计一个允许应用程序员和数值优化器轻松访问HCL编程环境的软件工具包，以及测试各种现实问题。例如，地震数据处理方法的研究为该项目提供了最初的动机，并且仍然是一个主要目标。软件的重用是软件工程研究的一个长期目标，因为软件开发和维护代表了计算成本的大部分。面向对象编程指定了一种将可重用性提升到指导原则地位的软件设计方法。传统(“过程性”)编程风格将数据和算法的内部细节嵌入到程序部分之间的接口中。面向对象的编程隐藏或封装了这些细节，这使得程序部分可以非常容易地互换。由于这个和其他原因，面向对象已经成为商业编程中的主导方法，特别是对于图形应用程序。到目前为止，它还没有对科学计算产生太大影响，科学计算同样需要可重复使用的软件。许多科学家不使用免费提供的高质量数值程序，原因很简单，这些程序编写的程序风格使它们与计算机辅助设计和制造、材料科学和生物技术等领域的自然数据表示法不兼容。本文提出的面向对象的基本科学计算框架可以大大加强数值分析人员和其他科学家之间的软件交流，从而提高计算研究的效率。

Symes 9627355 The investigator and his colleague aim to bridge the often large gap between ``off-the-shelf'' software packages for numerical optimization, on the one hand, and complex applications in science and engineering, on the other, through further development of the Hilbert Class Library, an object-oriented programming environment written in C++. This approach to programming expresses optimization algorithms in terms of their natural abstract components (vector addition, inner product, and so forth), without imposing unnecessary constraints on data structure and representation. Application software, on the other hand, can be written using the most suitable data structures, algorithms, and languages (various dialects of Fortran, for instance). The programming environment provides a flexible and largely automatic interface between the generic optimization code and the application-specific code. In addition to the elaboration of the basic class library, objectives of this proposal include the implementation of several modern algorithms for large-scale optimization, the design of a software toolkit that allows application programmers and numerical optimizers easy access to the HCL programming environment, and testing on a variety of realistic problems. For example, research in seismic data processing methods provided the original motivation for this project, and remains a principal target. Reuse of software is a long-standing goal of software engineering research, as software development and maintenance represents the bulk of the cost of computation. Object oriented programming designates an approach to software design that elevates reusability to the status of guiding principle. Traditional ("procedural") programming style embeds the internal details of data and algorithms in the interfaces between program parts. Object oriented programming hides or encapsulates these details, which permits program parts to be interchanged with considerably great er ease. For this and other reasons, object orientation has become the dominant methodology in commercial programming, especially for graphics applications. It has not up to now had much impact on scientific computation, which has an equally great need for reusable software. Many scientists do not use freely available high quality numerical programs, simply because the procedural style in which these programs are written makes them incompatible with natural data representations in such fields as computer aided design and manufacturing, materials science, and biotechnology. An object oriented framework for basic scientific computations, as proposed here, could lead to greatly enhanced interchange of software between numerical analysts and other scientists, and so improve the efficiency of computational research.