1Blurb:: 2Identify which method leads the Dakota study 3 4Description:: 5 6An optional \c top_method_pointer specification may be used to point 7to a particular method specification that will lead the Dakota 8analysis. The associated string must be a method identifier specified 9via \ref method-id_method. If \c top_method_pointer is not used, then 10it will be inferred as decribed below (no \c top_method_pointer within 11an environment specification is treated the same as no environment 12specification). 13 14<b> Default Behavior </b> 15 16The \c top_method_pointer keyword is typically used in Dakota studies 17consisting of more than one \ref method block to clearly indicate 18which is the leading method. This method provides the starting point 19for the iteration. The corresponding method specification may recurse 20with additional sub-method pointers in the case of "meta-iteration" 21(see \ref method) or may specify a single method without 22recursion. Either case will ultimately result in identification of one 23or more model specifications using \c model_pointer, which again may 24or may not involve further recursion (see \ref model-nested and \ref 25model-surrogate for recursion cases). Each of the model specifications 26identify the variables and responses specifications (using \ref 27model-variables_pointer and \ref model-responses_pointer) that are 28used to build the model, and depending on the type of model, may also 29identify an interface specification (for example, using \ref 30model-single-interface_pointer). If one of these specifications does 31not provide an optional pointer, then that component will be 32constructed using the last specification parsed. 33 34When the environment block is omitted, the top level method will be 35inferred as follows: When a single method is specified, there is no 36ambiguity and the sole method will be the top method. When multiple 37methods are specified, the top level method will be deduced from the 38hierarchical relationships implied by method pointers. If this 39inference is not well defined (e.g., there are multiple method 40specifications without any pointer relationship), then the default 41behavior is to employ the last method specification parsed. 42 43Topics:: block_pointer 44Examples:: 45Specify that the optimization method is the outermost method in an 46optimization under uncertainty study 47\verbatim 48environment 49 top_method_pointer 'OPTIMIZATION_METHOD' 50method 51 id_method 'UQ_METHOD' 52... 53method 54 id_method 'OPTIMIZATION_METHOD' 55... 56\endverbatim 57Theory:: 58Faq:: 59See_Also:: method-id_method 60