ORMSwareTM Suite is a product of Ushar Enterprises Inc, Littleton, Colorado, USA

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● Product Overview ● Primer ● Examples ● Hands-on tutorial and ORMSware downloads ●
 

ORMSwaretm Suite
Diagram is the Programsm

Flatten modeling, simulation and programming complexity, cost and time

Shift the Paradigm. Unleash Off-The-Cuff Self-Documenting Automation. Turn on a Dime.


If you want rapid-response disposable automation that spreadsheets offer but also want a versatile power drive for easy modeling and programming which is also virtually self-documenting, easily maintainable, quickly changeable, and visually verifiable, you have been looking for ORMSware.

Use an easy physical discrete event paradigm and visual relationships/operations diagram for modeling and programming. Express quantitative models and software logic in terms of multiple execution thread-heads operating on objects/entities, traveling through data processing hierarchies of logical queuing networks. Make your black box lucid for all stakeholders to see inside. Let highly reliable test plans congruent with code emerge effortlessly.
 

 

Current version of ORMSware is a free, fully functioning proof-of-concept prototype. Even without the envisioned seamless integration of Visio front-end the prototype is easy to use for industrial strength problems. Models are compiled, not interpreted, development is fast and flexible, and total lifecycle costs are lower than LCC of spreadsheets and traditional software, all in return for a few extra cycles of computational overhead.
An overview of additional benefits of ORMSware is listed after the Google ads below.


ORMSware (ormsware) benefits
  • Lucid, visual quantitative models that inspire, involve and connect all stakeholders of a problem

  • Transform complex spreadsheets into visual quantitative network models that are easy to understand, modify and maintain

  • Hybrid models, retaining easy parts in spreadsheets while moving complex parts to ORMSware

  • Automatic variable time dimension to easily express problem dynamics

  • Optimization, goal-seeking and numerous helpful functions

  • Powerful array operations

  • Monte Carlo simulation for uncertainty analysis

  • Standalone execution without ORMSware once a model is built

  • Portable programs with architecture-independent numerical accuracy

  • Free (but you will need Visio, UltraEdit and Lahey-Fujitsu compiler)

ORMSware Suite is a line of rapid, visual quantitative modeling tools from Ushar Enterprises Inc. ORMS in ORMSware stands for Operations Research/ Management Science. The first component of ORMSware Suite released in February 2003 is our [hierarchical] Network-structured Modeler (NMOD).

NMOD is a limited release of ORMSware's general purpose discrete event simulator component (next in line). The limit in this release is the absence of animation, Resource Module for automatic creation and handling of resource entities (watch for our innovation), and Statistics Module for automatic statistics gathering. As a subset of the discrete event simulator, NMOD is also a general purpose Monte Carlo simulation tool.

NMOD enables engineers and analysts to focus on quickly developing quantitative models that are too large and/or complex for spreadsheets, while avoiding the undesirable distractions of heavy admin burdens of programming.

NMOD has also turned out to be an ideal tool for systematic, rapid, risk-less transformation of legacy spreadsheets into visual quantitative networks. Many organizations have spreadsheets that have evolved over time into constraining spaghetti structures that are too risky to modify and hard to maintain. We have a low-cost, high-impact methodology for transforming spreadsheet models into visual NMOD models that are easy to understand, maintain and modify (See chapter on Transforming spreadsheet models into NMOD models in Hands-on Tutorial).

The general ORMSware paradigm is anchored in the undeniable fact that logical networks are pervasive structures which can be used to visually express quantitative solutions in any discipline, in any application arena. ORMSware network objects in combination with easy ORMSware notations make it possible to model virtually any quantitative problem in any setting.

NMOD's distributed components are tightly coordinated and synchronized. Since the NMOD engine is totally free from Windows overhead, and is detached from NMOD's model definition environment (Visio 2002 and UltraEdit browser), NMOD models execute very fast. This is a critical advantage when models are complex, large-scale and computationally intensive.

NMOD's engine is not confined to running on the PC platform. NMOD models are portable to any platform, from workstations to supercomputers.

Availability

NMOD's very first release (Version 0.0A, February 2003) is free until the next version is released. Registration is necessary in call cases.

Models developed with the current free version of NMOD, will continue to be legal and functional even when the paid version is released in the future.

ORMSware's target customers are...

  • Organizations in both government and commercial sectors who are constantly engaged in developing and maintaining complex and large-scale scientific and engineering models and advanced quantitative business models.
     
  • Organizations eager to migrate complex production spreadsheets partially or totally to an environment where content logic is easy to see, understand, modify and maintain.
     
  • Organizations seeking rapid-response off-the-cuff disposable automation similar to spreadsheets, with the power of traditional software engineering and the benefit of more easily verifiable visual logic.

Pricing details

ORMSware is licensed but free. However, it needs three support products to function (Microsoft Visio $250, IDM UltraEdit - $60, and Lahey/Fujitsu Fortran 95 Express compiler - $250. All three products have free trial periods.

Product details

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Contact information

Ushar Entperprises
Attn: ORMSware Project
4908 Coney Island Dr
Frisco, TX 75034, USA
972-752-7152

Please click here for contact form.
It is temporarily located at our consumer product site.

 

Reverse links

www.exceltip.com

Think. Condense. Model. Encode. Document.
Simultaneously.
Click image at left to see an example of how ORMSware helps analysts think through problems systematically while also documenting, and implementing models, and creating presentations, virtually simultaneously.

This link takes you to an example showing the approach one is likely to use when working with ORMSware to devise a simple algorithm for generating all possible ways a given number of items can be sequenced. It then demonstrates how large networks are logically condensed (to three ORMSware nodes in the case of this algorithm for sequencing any given number of items). The model is then extended to solve a special Asymmetric Traveling Salesman problem (ATSP) with nontrivial functions of distance, time and cost (a trucking problem).

 

Examples of model formulation using Visio interface

Example of Excel interface for data entry

Example of Visio on-drop mini-dialog box for arc properties