Glossary
- API
- Application Programming Interface. A set of functions that can be called from
an application program to access features of another program.
- Assembly
- The Assembly class is the primary building block of the system of
systems aspect of OpenMDAO. Each assembly has a Workflow and a
Driver, and acts as a container for Components. An assembly is also a
component, so hierarchical structures of assemblies can be created.
- AXOD
- Axial-Flow Turbine Off-Design. A a computer code used for
preliminary studies of the gas turbine system.
- Beaker
- A Session and Caching library with WSGI Middleware.
- branch
- An ordered series of revisions (see revision below) that describes the
history of a set of files.
- CAD
- Computer-Aided Design. An automated system for the design, drafting, and
display of graphically oriented information.
- CAE
- Computer-Aided Engineering. Using computers to design, analyze, and
manufacture products and processes.
- CAPRI
- Computational Analysis Programming Interface. CAPRI is a CAD vendor-neutral
programming interface that aids in acquiring geometry data directly from CAD
files.
- Case
- An object containing a collection of input names and values, and names of outputs
to be stored along with the inputs after the process model runs.
- CaseIterator
- An object that iteratively supplies Case objects. This iterator could be tied
to a simple file, a database, or some object that generates Case objects
dynamically.
- CFD
- Computational Fluid Dynamics. A branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical
methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows.
- CommandLineWrapper
- A component that runs a separate executable program via a system call.
- commit
- To record a change. A change is committed to a developer’s local
repository.
- Component
- Container that is runnable; it also supports several other framework
functions, such as checkpoint/restart, stop, and invoke. A component has
input and output attributes and can perform some sort of calculation when
it is executed.
- components
- See Component above.
- CONMIN
- An interface to the NASTRAN/NASA CONMIN optimization program.
- Container
- A container of Variables and other Containers. The base class of all objects
within the framework that support user access to input and output Variables.
- Coverage
- A Python module that measures code coverage during test execution.
- decorator
- A Python module that aims to simplify the usage of decorators for the average
programmer and to popularize decorators by showing various non-trivial examples. A
Python decorator is a specific change to the Python syntax that allows users to
more conveniently alter functions and methods.
- DLL
- Dynamically Loadable Library
- docutils
- Docutils is a modular system for processing documentation into useful
formats, such as HTML, XML, and LaTeX. For input Docutils supports
reStructuredText, an easy-to-read, what-you-see-is-what-you-get plain text
markup syntax.
- Driver
- A Driver’s function is to iterate over a Workflow until some
condition is met. The simplest Driver executes a Workflow only once.
Other Drivers, such as Optimizers or ParameterStudies, would execute
the Workflow a variable number of times based on their inputs.
- egg
- A zip file with a specified internal directory structure that
contains a Python package or module. It is similar to a jar file in java. For
more information on eggs, see PythonEggs.
- eggs
- See egg above.
- Elixir
- A declarative layer on top of SQLAlchemy that provides the ability to create simple
Python classes that map directly to relational database tables. It provides many of
the benefits of traditional databases without losing the convenience of Python
objects.
- F2PY
- Fortran to Python interface generator.
- Factory
- An object that knows how to create objects of specific types.
- FactoryManager
- All requests to create any type of Container must go through the
FactoryManager object. Multiple Factory derived objects can be registered with
the FactoryManager to allow creation of objects in various ways, e.g., locally
via import and remotely via an ObjServer.
- FEM
- Finite Element Method. A numerical technique for finding approximate
solutions of partial differential equations (PDE) as well as of integral
equations. A structural analysis method which discretizes a continuum model of a
complex structure to a discrete model of a finite number of degrees of freedom.
- FormEncode
- An HTML form validation, generation, and conversion package.
- GA
- Genetic algorithm
- GUI
- Graphical User Interface. A computer operating system that is based upon icons
and visual relationships rather than text.
- IGeomQueryObject
- An interface to an object having physical dimensions and shape, with
properties that can be queried.
- IPC
- Interprocess communication
- Jinja
- A small but fast and easy-to-use stand-alone template engine written in pure
Python.
- Jinja2
- Jinja2 is the new and improved version of Jinja with new features and a simpler and
faster runtime.
- JSON
- JSON, short for JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight computer data
interchange format. It is a text-based, human-readable format for representing
simple data structures and associative arrays (called objects).
- LAN
- Local Area Network. An interconnection of computers that are in relatively
close proximity to each other, such as within a building.
- Mako
- A template library written in Python that provides a familiar, non-XML syntax which
compiles into Python modules for maximum performance.
- MDAO
- Multi-disciplinary Analysis & Optimization
- metadata
- Metadata is information about an informational resource, such as a document (e.g,, a webpage), image,
dataset or other resource. It describes context, content, and structure of the resource and its
management through time.
- model
- A hierarchical structure with an Assembly at its root.
- networkx
- A Python package for creating and manipulating graphs and networks.
- NOSA
- NASA Open Source Agreement. A software license approved by the Open
Source Initiative (OSI). The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) releases some software under this license.
- nose
- A unittest extension offering automatic test suite discovery and easy test
authoring.
- nosecoverage2
- A nose plugin that exposes some features of version 3.2 of the coverage
package, including html output and cobertura output.
- NumPy
- NumPy is the fundamental package needed for scientific computing with Python. See
http://numpy.scipy.org/
- ObjServer
- A process that allows remote connections to a Component or Container
object. An ObjServer can represent an entire model if its top-level object
is an Assembly, or it can represent a single object if its top-level object
is some other type of Component.
- ObjServerFactory
- A process that spawns a child process (ObjServer) encapsulating an
instance of a particular Component or Container type.
- OML
- Outer Mold Line
- OS
- Open Source
- OSI
- Open Source Initiative.
- PBS
- Portable Batch System (PBS) is a queueing system. Jobs are submitted to the
queue that reflects the resources needed, and a scheduler decides which ones
to run when nodes become available. These decisions are made on the basis of
length of run, how long a job has been waiting, and fair sharing of resources
among different users.
- Paste
- Tools for using a Web Server Gateway Interface stack.
- PasteDeploy
- A tool to load, configure, and compose WSGI applications and servers.
- PasteScript
- A pluggable command-line frontend, including commands to setup package file layouts
- PID
- Process id
- PIL
- Python Imaging Library
- pip
- pip installs Python packages. It is a replacement for easy_install and uses mostly
the same techniques for finding packages, so packages that were made easy_installable
should be pip-installable as well.
- plugin
- A computer program that interacts with a host aplication to
provide specific functionality without changing the host application.
- plugins
- See plugin
- Public Variables
- A component’s inputs and outputs. They are called “Public” variables
because they are exposed to the framework; inputs can be set and
outputs can be read by other framework components. In general, a
Public Variable is a wrapper for some set of data and metadate that
can include a value, a default value, optional min/max values, and units.
Public Variables can also perform their own validation when being assigned
to another Public Variable. OpenMDAO’s Public Variables are implemented using
Traits, an open source extension to Python authored by Enthought, Inc.
- Pyevolve
- A complete Python genetic algorithm framework
- Pygments
- Pygments is a syntax highlighting package written in Python.
- Pylons
- A Web framework
- pyparsing
- A Python parsing module
- PyYAML
- A YAML parser and emitter for Python.
- repository
- A store of revisions. See revision.
- ResourceAllocator
- An object responsible for allocating CPU/disk resources for a particular
host, cluster, load balancer, etc.
- ResourceAllocatorManager
- An object that manages a number of child objects that are responsible for
allocating CPU and disk resources, either locally or for a particular
cluster or a particular load balancer. The RAM can be queried to determine
the current allocation of resources for the given system. This includes
host and PID information for all Components.
- ResourceDescription
- An object containing information defining system attributes required to
select a viable place to run a code.
- reStructuredText
- A plain-text markup syntax and parser system used for in-line
program documentation (such as Python docstrings), for quickly
creating simple Web pages, and for standalone documents. The
reStructuredText parser is a component of Docutils.
- revision
- A snapshot of the state of files and directories, including their
content. A revision also has some metadata associated with it, including
who committed it, when it was committed, a commit message, and the
parent revisions from which it was derived.
- roman
- A Python module for roman numerals.
- Routes
- A Routing package for Python that matches URLs to dicts (dictionary network
protocols) and vice versa.
- SciPy
- SciPy (pronounced “Sigh Pie”) is open-source software for mathematics, science, and
engineering.
- ScientificPython
- A collection of Python modules that are useful for scientific computing.
- setuptools
- Tools for downloading, building, installing, upgrading, and uninstalling
Python packages.
- simplejson
- Simple, fast, extensible JSON encoder/decoder for Python.
- Sphinx
- A Python documentation generator. It translates reStructuredText markup language into html.
- SQLAlchemy
- Database Abstraction Library
- Socket
- A placeholder for a plugin within a Component.
- SocketList
- A list that holds only objects that provide a particular interface.
- Sockets
- See Socket.
- StringRef
- A special kind of trait that contains a string that points to some
location in the OpenMDAO variable tree.
- SWIG
- Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator. A software development tool that connects
programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages. Go to
http://www.swig.org/index.php for more information.
- Tempita
- Tempita is a small templating language for text substitution.
- ticket
- A ticket is a file contained within an issue (or bug) tracking system
that contains information about a request, often by an end user, to
fix a bug or make some other change to a computer software package. A
ticket has a unique reference number (ticket number) that allows the
submitter, software developer, or other technical staff to quickly
locate, add to, or communicate the status of the submitter’s issue or
request. Once OpenMDAO’s bug-tracking tool is in place, all changes to
the software will require a ticket, and the ticket number will identify
the software branch where the change is being made.
- Traits
- A software package from Enthought, Inc. that aids in developing Python code. A trait is
a type definition that can be used for normal Python object attributes, giving the
attributes some additional characteristics. See http://code.enthought.com/projects/traits/.
The Traits package works with version 2.4 and later of Python and is similar in some ways
to the Python property language feature.
- TraitType
- The base class used to validate and possibly convert data objects that are
passed between linked Components.
- units
- An egg used by OpenMDAO that provides unit conversion capability for variables.
- Variable
- A wrapper for data passed between framework components. Variables can contain
a value, a default value, optional min/max values, and units. Variables can
perform their own validation when being assigned to another Variable. To
extend the framework by creating a new data type to be passed between
Components, a developer would create a new Python class that inherits from
Variable. This Variable would have its own validation routine and could also
have a custom viewer/editor.
- VSP
- Vehicle Sketch Pad. VSP is a rapid geometry creation tool used to create a
wide range of aerospace vehicles from a combination of predefined components.
It provides highly interactive sketching of concepts with immediate visual
feedback.
- WebError
- A Python package for Web error handling and exception catching.
- WebHelpers
- A library of helper functions intended to make writing templates in Web applications
easier. It’s the standard function library for Pylons and TurboGears 2. It also
contains a large number of functions not specific to the Web, including text
processing, number formatting, date calculations, container objects, etc.
- WebOb
- WSGI request and response object
- WebTest
- Helper to test WSGI applications. This wraps any WSGI application and makes it
easy to send test requests to that application without starting up an HTTP
server.
- Workflow
- A Workflow controls the execution order of a group of Components. The Workflow
class supports simple sequential execution. Other classes inheriting from
Workflow will support different execution schemes, e.g., concurrent execution,
conditional execution, and looping of various types.
- WSGI
- Web Server Gateway Interface. WSGI is a standard interface for Python Web
applications to communicate with Web servers.
- YAML
- YAML is a data serialization format designed for human readability and interaction
with scripting languages.
- Zope
- Zope is an open source application server for building content management
systems, intranets, portals, and custom applications. Zope is written in
Python, an object-oriented scripting language.
- zope.component
- Zope Component Architecture
- zope.deferredimport
- The zope.deferredimport package provided facilities for defining names in modules
that will be imported from somewhere else when used.
- zope.deprecation
- This package provides a simple function called “deprecated(names, reason)” to
deprecate Python objects.
- zope.event
- A very basic event publishing system.
- zope.i18nmessageid
- This package provides facilities for delaring messages (which carry a
translation source domain and possibly a default translation) within program
source text; translation of the messages is the responsiblitiy of the “zope.i18n”
package.
- zope.interface
- A package that provides an implementation of object interfaces for Python.
- zope.proxy
- Generic transparent proxies. Proxies are special objects which serve as
mostly transparent wrappers around another object, intervening in the apparent
behavior of the wrapped object only when necessary to apply the policy (e.g.,
access checking, location brokering, etc.) for which the proxy is responsible.
- zope.schema
- zope.interface extension for defining data schemas
- ZopeSkel
- ZopeSkel provides a collection of skeletons for quickstarting Zope and Plone
projects.
