Initializing help system before first use

Developing an App with the Insight Python Module

The View Designer, available in FICO® Xpress Workbench, is used to generate VDL views that can be exported to FICO® Xpress Insight, that then provide a user interface for your Python application. This section will guide you through creating a basic Insight Python project, establishing the connection to FICO ® Xpress Insight by publishing the empty file, and then creating a working Python application that can be executed in FICO ® Xpress Workbench. We will then create a VDL file that can be published to Xpress Insight that integrates with this Python app.

The entities created in this tutorial relate to solving the Example Business Problem.

The Python template file represents the best practice Python file format that can be conceptually divided into three functional areas:
  • Initially, you import your libraries and declare your data.
  • Define the Load function that initializes all inputs.
  • Define the Run function that initializes all results and anything marked as requiring update after execution.

We shall use FICO® Xpress as the solver for this problem, but the Insight Python module can connect to any solver.

Read the section View Designer Overview for information on the View Designer.
Covered Topics
  • Create the Python Project
    In this section we shall create a Python file based on the standard template that solves the example business problem.
Parent Topic Using Python to Model the Example Business Problem