storing equations as graphs

[CagtayFabry]

Currently we store the sympy equations as strings which is very accessible and simple to use

In case a more 'robust' solution is required in the future we could also think about storing the equation in graph form using sympy.dotprint https://docs.sympy.org/latest/tutorial/printing.html#dot

sympy -> dot -> networkx

It would be similiar to what asdf is doing in their schemas but might be more flexible overal

[marscher]

That sounds interesting. What would be a use-case for storing the equations graph? What about forward compatibility, if we skip the parsing of the equation string and just rely that this graph will be future proof?
Currently I can only things which could cause trouble instead of any worth benefit.

[CagtayFabry]

In my opinion the main benefit would be that you could make sure the equation is actually valid since there is no syntax check (before loading) on the strings in the schema
However the overhead is certainly large

certainly not something we need right now though😉

[marscher]

Isn't the expression string cast into a Sympy expression before serialization? If so, it would already be checked to be valid, right?

[CagtayFabry]

Isn't the expression string cast into a Sympy expression before serialization? If so, it would already be checked to be valid, right?

Yes on the python side everything should be checked when loading but there is no validation on an ASDF level

If you would create an ASDF file with an invalid expression you will end up with a sympy error when loading the file. Ideally in cases like these there should be a ValidationError before anyhting sympy related happens. (since the ASDF file should be valid independent from sympy or any other python implementation)