Developing OR Applications
In BAMS 580D students receive instruction in the use of the latest OR tools and technologies. Students become familiar with commercial software applications commonly used in practice, and learn how to develop OR applications using these products. The curriculum features courses, tutorials, and seminars in the use of software packages including statistical applications, databases, simulation modeling packages, optimization solvers, mathematical modeling languages, and the MS Office Suite with Visual Basic applications.
A large part of the course is learning to program in Visual Basic for Applications and to use it in conjunction with Excel and Access. To build upon the database content, instruction is also provided in SQL (Structured Query Language) and relational databases.
All the course activities take place in the lab, so be sure to activate your Sauder Computer Lab account: go to the link http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/lts/labs and follow the instructions. Activation takes from an hour to one day so you should do this as early as possible.
Session 1: Getting started with VBA
- Introduction to Excel VBA
- Coding Style Rules
- Basic Operations: Defining variables, math functions
- Programming Structures: If then, Select Case, Do Loops, With, For each
Session 2: Storing and retrieving data
- Working with Arrays: indexing, dynamic arrays
- Working with Ranges: methods and properties
- Procedures and Functions
Session 3. VBA Forms
- Event Procedures
- Forms: built-in dialogs, controls, vba user forms
- Testing and Debugging
Session 4. Introduction to databases
- What are databases?
- Database design: entity-relationship model, relational and physical models
- Introduction to SQL: creating, reading, updating and deleting with SQL
Session 5. SQL Queries
- Queries basics: select from where clauses
- Comparison Keywords: is null, in, like
- Querying multiple tables: join clauses
Session 6. Summarizing Data
Session 7. Data Visualization