ALADDIN Architecture and Philosophy of Development...

[ ALADDIN Architecture ] [ Philosophy of Development ]


ALADDIN ARCHITECTURE

Figure 1. is a schematic of the ALADDIN architecture.

Figure 1 : High-Level Components in ALADDIN

The three main parts of ALADDIN are:

Engineering problems are described in ALADDIN's problem description files, and are solved using components of ALADDIN that are part interpreter-based, and part compiled C code.


PHILOSOPHY OF DEVELOPMENT

In traditional approaches to problem solving, engineers write the details of a problem and its solution procedure on paper. They use physical units to add clarity to the problem description, and may specify step-by-step details for a numerical solution to the problem. We would like the ALADDIN language to be textually descriptive, and strike a balance between simplicity and extensibility. It should use a small number of data types and control structures, incorporate physical units, and yet, be descriptive enough so that the pencil and paper and ALADDIN problem description files are almost the same.

It is important to keep in mind that as the speed of CPU processors increases, the time needed to prepare a problem description increases relative to the total time needed to work through an engineering analysis. Hence, clarity of an input file's contents is of paramount importance. In the design of the ALADDIN language we attempt to achieve these goals with:


Developed in April 1996 by Mark Austin
Last Modified May 27, 1996
Copyright © 1996, Mark Austin, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Maryland