Questions about interfacing as needed for using Maxima CAS for engineering problems (master thesis)

Richard Fateman wrote:

>
>
> If you insist on starting up a C program and then trying to send 
> information
> to Maxima, you can do that too, but the connection over a socket requires
> some management.
>
Thank U for this information :)

I was hoping to find an interface like Yacas (Yet Another Computer 
Algebra System) has ( see 
http://yacas.sourceforge.net/essayschapter3.html#c3s4 )

I will search the examples u gave

 >(wxmaxima, texmacs, xmaxima, emaxima  come to mind.)

for have a layer like this . (If somebody coincidently knows exactly 
where to find this, it would be a great help )

>
> Oh, by the way, so far as I know, "typical engineering" computations may
> involve the solution of differential equations, but none of them
> involve the solution in closed form, symbolically, of differential
> equations.
>   So the trick that Maxima can perform for you is of no interest
> to typical engineers.  You will have to find the unusual engineer
> or unusual problem  in which new and different differential equations
> come up and/or the task is to find a symbolic solution, e.g. with
> parameters.
>    Engineers are usually content with numerical programs, for historical
> and practical reasons.
>
I believe U are right that most Engineers are usually content with 
numerical programs. My thesis is to help the non-usual engineer who has 
to do a more fundamental research. Or to help the engineering/PHD 
student who has to computate a theoretical part of a specific 
engineering model and has too use computer algebra.

For example, I followed a course about  "Heat and mass transfer" (the 
subjects are "Energy conservation"; "stationary and transient heat 
conduction"; "flow and heat transfer by convection"; "diffusion and 
convective mass transfer"; "dimensionless numbers and correlations";  
...). It had a lot of differential equations, all symbolically.

>
>    As for doing something in parallel, there are examples of making
> Maxima-like programs run in parallel on some tasks, but I doubt that
> running ODE2  (the 2nd order diff. eq. solver) will be a task which
> parallelizes much.  More basic tasks might be better targets.
> Or maybe symbolic matrix computations of some sorts.

Coincidently, I did a project last year about parallel matrix 
computations. U are right, and it is not my intention to re-write parts 
of Maxima in parallel. My intention is to write the top layer program in 
parallel, where every node has a Maxima interface and solves one part of 
a bigger theoretical engineering problem.

Thanks for the help,
Best Greetings,

Edwin