Publication History

AMPL: A Modeling Language
for Mathematical Programming

by Robert Fourer, David M. Gay, and Brian W. Kernighan

Duxbury Press / Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 2002

Second edition now available
517 + xxi pp., ISBN 0-534-38809-4, $53.95

The first edition of the AMPL book passed through a series of publishers: The Scientific Press was the original publisher. Books from the first printing, which say "Scientific Press" on the spine, were first available in November 1992 (copyright 1993) packaged with a booklet entitled Using the AMPL Student Edition under MS-DOS and disks containing the AMPL Student Edition software. Boyd & Fraser Publishers, a division of ITP (International Thomson Publishing), acquired The Scientific Press effective October 1993. A second printing, with the publisher's "bf" logo on the spine, was produced in the summer of 1994; it came with updated AMPL and solver software (including CPLEX 2.1) and a correspondingly updated version of the booklet. A third printing, in summer 1995, incorporated further AMPL and solver software updates (including CPLEX 3.0). Duxbury Press, another part of ITP, acquired the AMPL book when ITP dissolved Boyd & Fraser in the fall of 1995. Duxbury was at that time an imprint of ITP's Wadsworth Publishing Company, but has subsequently been shifted to ITP's Brooks/Cole Publishing Company. A fourth printing, in summer 1996, was distributed with the same software as before but with a "thin" version of Using the AMPL Student Edition under MS-DOS that contained the MS-DOS section but not the MINOS or CPLEX section. Toward the end of 1996, Duxbury completed the printing of a new, expanded version of the booklet entitled Using the AMPL Student Edition with AMPL Plus for Microsoft Windows, accompanied by a completely new release of the Student Edition software. The remaining copies of the fourth printing were distributed in a package containing both the old software (inside the back cover of the book) and the new software (inside the back cover of the booklet). Copies of the fourth printing ran out sometime in the summer of 1997, and a fifth printing was ordered, to arrive at the end of October 1997. After a series of miscues that need not be detailed here, the AMPL book was again available sometime in February 1998. All backorders from the previous months were cleared out, as far as we know. There were additional printings in 1998-1999. In 1999 the publisher's corporate parent changed its name to Thomson Learning. An eighth printing with updated software on CD became available in early 2000. This update was accompanied by a change in the book's ISBN, from 0-534-50983-5 to 0-534-37895-1, but the old ISBN is still in the databases of online booksellers. Previous purchasers of the book were invited to upgrade to the new software at no charge. In contrast to previous publishers, Duxbury has not sold the AMPL software (aside from the Student Edition that was bundled with the book). A full line of AMPL software products is available from several optimization software vendors. A thoroughly revised and expanded second edition of the AMPL Book was released in November 2002. Its price was reduced to approximately the original price of the first edition -- about half of what Duxbury had been asking for first-edition copies a few months earlier. The second edition adds coverage of AMPL features introduced over the past 10 years, whose descriptions were previously only available in rough form on the AMPL web site. New chapters cover database access, modeling commands, display commands, command scripts, interactions with solvers, and complementarity problems. Existing chapters are also extensively revised, and an updated reference manual is provided as an appendix. Up-to-date AMPL Student Edition software continues to be available for downloading, but will no longer be supplied on CD with the book. This change simplifies the publication process and insures that readers obtain the latest versions of AMPL and solvers. The AMPL Plus Student Edition software that accompanied the book is no longer available, however, and licenses of all copies of AMPL Plus expired at the end of 2002. Previous users of the AMPL Plus Student Edition need to download the standard (command-line) version or one of the experimental GUI versions. The AMPL book has been shipping within 2-3 days (when not "on order" or out of stock) from our Optimization Bookstore through Amazon.com. Amazon.com's shipping times for the second edition may be longer, however, while its inventory system adjusts to this new item. The AMPL book is also available from the publisher at 10% off plus shipping and tax. Comments or questions? Write to info@ampl.com or use our comment form. Back to AMPL book page. Back to AMPL home page. LAST MODIFIED 1 JANUARY 2003 BY 4er.