[boost] Fwd: ODEInt review

Subject: [boost] Fwd: ODEInt review
From: Steven Watanabe (watanabesj_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-10-02 14:15:33

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: ODEInt review
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:48:18 -0400
From: Reese, Greg Dr. <greg.reese_at_[hidden]>
To: watanabesj_at_[hidden] <watanabesj_at_[hidden]>
CC: Reese, Greg Dr. <greg.reese_at_[hidden]>

Please always state in your review, whether you think the library should
 be accepted as a Boost library!

Absolutely!

- What is your evaluation of the design?

Good. Good use of policies

Is it necessary to set an initial step size on the adaptive integrators?
Shouldn't they be able to

figure this out on their own? If the size is needed, maybe it could have
a default value so the

user doesn't have to pass the argument.

- What is your evaluation of the implementation?

Appears to be good but I didn't look at code in detail.

- What is your evaluation of the documentation?

Excellent! Probably the best documentation of any Boost library.

Suggestions:

1) Add general explanation of "observers", e.g., what they do, sample uses.

2) In documentation of example programs, add plots of outputs. These
help users decide

if the program ran correctly and if they're interpreting the outputs
correctly

- What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?

Extremely useful to C++ programmers who want to incorporate ODE
solutions into their code

- Did you try to use the library?  With what compiler?  Did you have any
problems?

Used Microsoft Visual C++ 2012. No problems.

- How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick
reading? In-depth study?

2-3 hours. Read through documentation, ran a number of sample programs

- Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

Yes

Suggestion for future (not current!) version - add capability for user
routines to stop the

Integration process. This is useful for breaking out of periodic
solutions, for stopping

the computations if the solution attains meaningless values, and for
limiting the amount

of running time.  See, for example, "Event Location" at
http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/math/ordinary-differential-equations.html#f1-669698

Perhaps this capability can be incorporated into the observers.

Greg Reese