Free managerial economics software for linux

Test::STDmaker is a Perl module to generate test scripts, demo scripts from a test description short hand.

SYNOPSIS

#######
# Procedural (subroutine) interface
#
use Test::STDmake qw(find_t_roots get_data perl_command);

@t_path = find_t_paths()
$date = get_date();
$myperl = perl_command();

#####
# Class interface
#
use Test::STDmaker

$std = new Test::STDmaker( @options ); # From File::Maker

$success = $std->check_db($std_pm);
@t_path = $std->find_t_paths()
$date = $std->get_date();
$myperl = $std->perl_command();

$std->tmake( @targets, %options );
$std->tmake( @targets );
$std->tmake( %options );

######
# Internal (Private) Methods
#
$success = $std->build($std_driver_class);
$success = $std->generate();
$success = $std->print($file_out);

The Test::STDmaker program module provides the following capabilities:
Automate Perl related programming needed to create a test script resulting in reduction of time and cost.

Translate a short hand Software Test Description (STD) file into a Perl test script that eventually makes use of the Test module.

Translate the sort hand STD data file into a Perl demo script that demonstrates the features of the the module under test.

Provide in the POD of a STD file information required by a Military/Federal Government Software Test Description (STD) document that may easily be index and accessed by automated Test software. ISO, British Military require most of the same information, US agencies such as the FAA. The difference is that ISO, British Military do not dictate detail format. US agencies such as FAA will generally tailor down the DOD required formats.

Thus, there is an extremely wide variation in the format of the same information among ISO certified comericial activities and militaries other than US. Once the information is in a POD, different translators may format nearly exactly as dictated by the end user, whether it is the US DOD, ISO certified commericial activity, British Military or whoever. By being able to provide the most demanding, which is usually US DOD, the capabilities are there for all the others.

The Test::STDmaker package relieves the designer and developer from the burden of filling out word processor boiler plate templates (whether run-off, Word, or vi), counting oks, providing documentation examples, tracing tests to test requirments, making sure it is in the proper corporate, ISO or military format, and other such extremely time consuming, boring, development support tasks. Instead the designers and developers need only to fill in a form using a test description short hand. The Test::STDmaker will take it from there and automatically and quickly generate the desired test scripts, demo scripts, and test description documents.

Look at the economics. It does not make economically sense to have expensive talent do this work. In does not even make economically sense to take a bright 16 year, at mimimum wage and have him manually count oks. Perl can count those oks much much cheaper and it is so easily to automated with Perl. And something like this were you are doing it year in and year out, the saving are enormous. To a program manager or contract officer, this is what programming and computers are all about, saving money and increasing productivity, not object oriented oriented programing, gotos or other such things.

The Test::STDmaker class package automates the generation of Software Test Descriptions (STD) Plain Old Documentation (POD), test scripts, demonstrations scripts and the execution of the generated test scripts and demonstration scripts. It will automatically insert the output from the demonstration script into the POD -headx Demonstration section of the file being tested.

Rocks Cluster is a complete "cluster on a CD" solution for x86 and IA64 Red Hat Linux COTS clusters.
Building a Rocks cluster does not require any experience in clustering, yet a cluster architect will find a flexible and programmatic way to redesign the entire software stack just below the surface (appropriately hidden from the majority of users).
Although Rocks includes the tools expected from any clustering software stack (PBS, Maui, GM support, Ganglia, etc), it is unique in its simplicity of installation.
From a hardware component and raw processing power perspective, commodity clusters are phenomenal price/performance compute engines. However, if a scalable ``cluster management strategy is not adopted, the favorable economics of clusters are offset by the additional on-going personnel costs involved to ``care and feed for the machine. The complexity of cluster management (e.g., determining if all nodes have a consistent set of software) often overwhelms part-time cluster administrators, who are usually domain application scientists. When this occurs, machine state is forced to either of two extremes: the cluster is not stable due to configuration problems, or software becomes stale, security holes abound, and known software bugs remain unpatched.
While earlier clustering toolkits expend a great deal of effort (i.e., software) to compare configurations of nodes, Rocks makes complete Operating System (OS) installation on a node the basic management tool. With attention to complete automation of this process, it becomes faster to reinstall all nodes to a known configuration than it is to determine if nodes were out of synchronization in the first place. Unlike a users desktop, the OS on a cluster node is considered to be soft state that can be changed and/or updated rapidly.
This is clearly more heavywieght than the philosophy of configuration management tools [Cfengine] that perform exhaustive examination and parity checking of an installed OS. At first glance, it seems wrong to reinstall the OS when a configuration parameter needs to be changed. Indeed, for a single node this might seem too severe. However, this approach scales exceptionally well, making it a preferred mode for even a modest-sized cluster. Because the OS can be installed from scratch in a short period of time, different (and perhaps incompatible) application-specific configurations can easily be installed on nodes. In addition, this structure insures any upgrade will not interfere with actively running jobs.
One of the key ingredients of Rocks is a robust mechanism to produce customized distributions (with security patches pre-applied) that define the complete set of software for a particular node. A cluster may require several node types including compute nodes, frontend nodes file servers, and monitoring nodes. Each of these roles requires a specialized software set. Within a distribution, different node types are defined with a machine specific Red Hat Kickstart file, made from a Rocks Kickstart Graph.
A Kickstart file is a text-based description of all the software packages and software configuration to be deployed on a node. The Rocks Kickstart Graph is an XML-based tree structure used to define RedHat Kickstart files. By using a graph, Rocks can efficiently define node types without duplicating shared components. Similiar to mammalian species sharing 80% of their genes, Rocks node types share much of their software set. The Rocks Kickstart Graph easily defines the differences between node types without duplicating the description of their similarities. See the Bibliography section for papers that describe the design of this structure in more depth.
By leveraging this installation technology, we can abstract out many of the hardware differences and allow the Kickstart process to autodetect the correct hardware modules to load (e.g., disk subsystem type: SCSI, IDE, integrated RAID adapter; Ethernet interfaces; and high-speed network interfaces). Further, we benefit from the robust and rich support that commercial Linux distributions must have to be viable in todays rapidly advancing marketplace.
Wherever possible, Rocks uses automatic methods to determine configuration differences. Yet, because clusters are unified machines, there are a few services that require ``global knowledge of the machine -- e.g., a listing of all compute nodes for the hosts database and queuing system. Rocks uses an SQL database to store the definitions of these global configurations and then generates database reports to create service-specific configuration files (e.g., DHCP configuration file, /etc/hosts, and PBS nodes file).
Enhancements:
- Rocks v4.3 is released for i386 and x86_64 CPU architectures. New features: Rocks command line - initial release of the Rocks command line which facilitates non-SQL administrative access to the database; PXE First - hosts can now be configured in BIOS with a boot order of CD, PXE, hard disk. Enhancements: based on CentOS 4.5 and all updates as of July 4, 2007; Anaconda installer updated to 10.1.1.63; performance improvement when building torrent files for the Avalanche Installer; database indirects, more flexibility with Rocks variables; Globus updated to gt4.0.4 with web services....

XMDS project is a code generator that integrates equations. You write them down in human readable form in an XML file, and it goes away and writes and compiles a C++ program that integrates those equations as fast as it can possibly be done in your architecture.
xmds - the eXtensible Multi-Dimensional Simulator - is a program for solving equations - fast. It is a tool to simplify the computer modelling of various systems, and is currently being developed within the Australian Centre for Quantum-Atom Optics at the University of Queensland.
There are many situations in many areas where a system of interest can be modelled by a differential equation or equations. Such areas include: physics, mathematics, engineering, physical and theoretical chemistry, theoretical and computational biology, finance, and economics. Modelling these systems involves writing a computer program to find a solution to the equations, which is not necessarily easy to do.
This is where xmds comes in. The advantage of using xmds instead of doing the same job by means of conventional programming is the same as ordering a pizza as opposed to making one yourself. The only thing you have to learn to become an xmds user is "How to order a pizza".
There are a couple of important differences here though: normally you have to pay for the pizza, while xmds comes for free; and xmds is like a gourmet pizza outlet - one has the option of exotic things like solving stochastic equations, which the chain-brand "pizza vendors" dont offer! xmds therefore makes writing complex computer simulations simple.
Another major advantage of xmds is that it is free. The source code and documentation can be freely downloaded from the xmds web site. xmds runs on Linux, Unix (including MacOS X) and the Cygwin environment on Windows, help for installing xmds on these systems is available both from the web site and the xmds distribution.
xmds is especially useful in solving complex problems requiring solving the problem over many different random parameters. Such problems can be parallelised (run on lots of computers at the same time) and xmds does this automatically with little user input, making the solution of these problems a breeze.
Often writing a computer program to solve complex problems can be very difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone. This is where xmds excels. One merely needs to write a script in a high-level form which is easy for a person to understand, and xmds goes off and writes the low-level code for you, producing code that is better for a computer.
This makes the writing of a simulation program significantly easier, reducing the development time, and almost eliminating bugs since xmds has written the vast majority of the code for you and has used thoroughly tested code and techniques in the production of the program.
The output program that xmds writes is still about as fast as code hand-written by an expert, so one can has the best of both worlds: quick development time, and quick execution.
So, if youre trying to model a bunch of atoms bouncing around together, the diffusion of an electrolyte solution, the reaction of enzymes with a substrate, or the volatility of stock prices, then xmds is the simulation tool for you.
Main features:
- An open-source XML based simulation package
- From Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) up to stochastic Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
- Many applications:
- physics
- mathematics
- engineering
- finance
- economics
- chemistry
- theoretical biology
- Generates fast, C++ compiled code
- Documentation and source are free!
- Runs on Linux, Unix, MacOS X and Cygwin (Windows)
Installation
tar -xzvf xmds-1.3-5.tar.gz
cd xmds-1.3-5
./configure --with-user (or if logged on as root ./configure)
make
make install
Enhancements:
- This is another bugfix release of xmds-1.6.
- It is unlikely that anyone else has ever encountered these bugs, and now they never will. We are back to "no known bugs".