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How to Use This Manual

The manual is divided into roughly three parts. The first part consists of Sections 2-4 and contains background information. Those not familiar with the basic methodology of branch, cut, and price should read these sections, especially Section 4, where we briefly describe the techniques involved at a high level. The second part of the manual consists of Sections 5-7 and is intended for further background and a more complete understanding of the design and implementation of SYMPHONY. However, it is not really necessary to to read these sections before undertaking development of a SYMPHONY application. In Section 5, we describe the overall design of without reference to the implementational details and with only passing reference to parallelism. In Section 6, we then move on to discuss the details of the implementation. In Section 7, we briefly discuss issues involved in parallel execution of SYMPHONY. The remainder of the manual, including Sections 8-11 describes in detail how to develop an application using SYMPHONY. For those who are familiar with branch and cut and want to get started quickly, proceed directly to to Section 8 for information on getting started. Section 10 contains a description of the API, and finally, SYMPHONY's parameters are described in Section 11. Please note that for reference use, the HTML version of this manual may be more practical, as the embedded hyperlinks make it easier to navigate.


next up previous contents
Next: A Brief History Up: SYMPHONY 3.0.1 User's Manual Previous: Contents
Ted Ralphs
2003-05-29