SQL as an Optimization Modeling Language

Several years ago, a former (awesome) colleague of mine at Microsoft, Bart de Smet, and I discussed the expressibility of optimization problems using SQL syntax. Most formulations carry over in a straightforward way, for example if we want to solve:

minimize 2 x + y
subject to 
x^2 + y^2 <= 1,
x >= 0.

Then we can express this as

CREATE TABLE VARS (
  X FLOAT,
  Y FLOAT
);
SELECT TOP 1 X, Y
FROM VARS
WHERE 
  POWER(X, 2) + POWER(Y, 2) <= 1 AND X >= 0
ORDER BY 2*X + Y ASC;

Through suitable rewriting such a specification could be easily sent to a solver. You get the idea; a range of problem types, and even concepts like warm starting are easily supported. I suppose even column generation could be supported via triggers.

Update 10/1/2015: Friends Of The Blog Jeff, Alper, and colleagues thought of this long before I did. See this paper for more.

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