An introduction to ASCEND : its language and interactive environment

Abstract: "Recently there has been a growing realization among researchers and practioners [sic] that current technologies do not adequatelysupport mathematical modeling 'in the large.' In this paper we discuss a technology called ASCEND, which addresses this issue. We describetwo aspects of the technology: a modeling language and an interactive model-building environment. The ASCEND language is structured, declarative, and strongly-typed and incorporates object-oriented extensions. The interactive environment is based on the notion of a concurrentset of tools which reflect the various phases of ASCEND modeling. These tools do not enforce a strict sequence of operations, but rather have been designed to support the flexible access implied by declaratively specified models.We claim that ASCEND offers solutions to several of the issues raised by Arthur Geoffrion and use categories introduced by him to frame thisdiscussion."