COIN-OR and Open-Source Events
EURO XXI Meeting 2006

Presentations, tutorial, user-group meeting, and booth on open-source software at the EURO XXI Meeting 2006.

The COIN-OR User Group Meeting will be held on Wednesday at 10:30. The meeting is a regular session in the conference. See Session WB-27 in Stream COIN-OR of the program for the location.

To update the information on this page, send a note.

COIN-OR Users Group Meeting: Wednesday 10:30-12:00

Coordinator: Robin Lougee-Heimer, IBM Research, robinlh@us.ibm.com
Location: Session WB-27 in Stream COIN-OR: Open-source Software. Wednesday 10:30--12:00.
Agenda:
  • Welcome and introductions
  • Overview of COIN-OR and current projects
  • Description of the COIN-OR Foundation & Membership
    -- Matthew Saltzman, President, COIN-OR Foundation
  • Recent improvements to COIN-OR on-line
    -- Ted Ralphs, Chair, Technical Leadership Council, COIN-OR Foundation
  • How to contribute your software
  • Open discussion
If you would like to add an item to the agenda, send a post to the coin-discuss mailing list available at http://www.coin-or.org.

Visit the COIN-OR Booth in the Conference Exhibit Area


The Computational INfrastructure for Operations Research is a community project to create an open infrastructure of algorithms, models, data, interfaces, and other digital tools for OR professionals and students. COIN-OR is run by the educational nonprofit COIN-OR Foundation, Inc. and hosted on-line by INFORMS. Visit the booth and check out our currrent offerings of over 20 projects for you to download and use, free of charge.

Open-Source Presentations

Session TD-1: Tuesday July 4, 14:00 - 15:30pm

Title: Tutorial: Introduction to COIN-OR
Chair: JP Fasano and Robin Lougee-Heimer, IBM Research
Co-authors: Alan King, IBM Research; Ted Ralphs, Leigh Univesity; Matthew Saltzman, Clemson University
Abstract: The Computational Infrastructure for Operations Research (COIN-OR) is an initiative to promote open-source software for the operations research community. At the COIN-OR website, www.coin-or.org, a number of open-source software tools for solving optimization problems are available. These include full-featured codes for linear, nonlinear, and integer programming, as well as component libraries that can be combined in various ways to build custom solvers. In this workshop, we will provide an overview of COIN-OR. The main focus of the workshop will be on tools for linear and integer programming, such as the COIN LP Solver, the Open Solver Interface, the Cut Generation Library, and the COIN Branch Cut Solver. We will also cover the Stochastic Modeling Interface, a tool for modeling stochastic programming problems.

Session TE-27: Tuesday July 4, 16:00 - 17:30pm

Title: COIN-OR I
Chair: JP Fasano, IBM Research
Presentations
  • Title: COIN-OR: Open-source Software for Operations Research
    Lead: Robin Lougee-Heimer, IBM Research
    Co-author: Brenda Dietrich, IBM Research
    Abstract: The Computational Infrastructure for Operation Research (COIN-OR) is a initiative to promote the use and development of open-source software in Operations Research. In this talk we explain what is open-source software and describe the elements ofthis open source library, why IBM spearheaded the COIN-OR initiative (and continues to support it today), and how the open-source software freely available on COIN-OR is being used by companies, universities, and researchers. As of November, 2004 COIN-OR has been managed by the nonprofit COIN-OR Foundation, Inc and is on-line at www.coin-or.org.

  • Title: The ALPS Library for Scalable Parallel Search and Optimization
    Lead: Matthew Saltzman, Clemson University
    Co-authors: Yan Xu, SAS Institute, Inc; Ted Ralphs, Lehigh University; Laszlo Ladanyi, IBM Research
    Abstract: ALPS (Abstract Library for Parallel Search) is a framework for implementing high-performance parallel search and optimization algorithms. Building on the ALPS base layer, BiCePS (Branch-Cut-Price Software) implements a data-management layer for Lagrangian duality-based optimization, and BLIS (BiCePS Linear Integer Solver) completes an LP-based MIP solver. We present results of computational tests on large integer programs.

  • Title: CoinMP: Simple C-API Windows DLL implementation of CLP, CBC, and CGL
    Lead: Bjarni Kristjansson, Maximal Software
    Abstract: The COIN Open Source Initiative has become very popular in the recent years. To make life easier for users that simply want to solve models and not compile C++ applications, we have developed standard C-API Windows DLL CoinMP.DLL that implements most of the functionality of CLP, CBC, and CGL.

Session WA-27: Wednesday July 5, 08:30 - 10:00pm

Title: COIN-OR II
Chair: John Tomlin, Yahoo Research
Presentations
  • Title: OSiL: An Open Standard for Expressing and Using Optimization Problem Instances
    Lead: Robert Fourer, Northwestern University
    Co-author: Jun Ma, Northwestern University, Kipp Martin, University of Chicago
    Abstract: Distributed modeling environments necessitate an open standard for exchanging optimization problem instances. For this purpose we present OSiL, an XML-based instance representation for large-scale linear and nonlinear optimization. OSiL uses the object-oriented features of XML to efficiently represent nonlinear expressions. Its schema maps directly to an in-memory representation that provides a robust application programming interface, facilitates reading and writing a range of data formats, and makes the nonlinear expression tree readily available for function and derivative evaluations.

  • Title: Stochastic Modeling in COIN-OR: Next Steps
    Lead: Alan King, IBM Research
    Abstract: We discuss the basic infrastructure of COIN-OR and outline the requirements we wish to meet: (1) incorporate probabilistic modeling concepts, including stochastic programming and robust optimization, (2) support solution concepts, including modeling distributions and implementing solvers, and (3) interfaces to modeling languages.

  • Title: The COIN-OR Open Solver Interface
    Lead: JP Fasano, IBM Research
    Abstract: The COIN-OR Open Solver Interface (OSI) is a uniform C++ API (Application Program Interface) for calling math programming solvers. Programs written to the OSI standard may be linked to any solver with an OSI interface and should produce correct results. This talk will cover using the OSI to create an LP formulation, modify the formulation by adding rows/columns, modify the formulation by adding cutting planes provided by the COIN Cut Generation Library (CGL), solving the formulation (and resolving after modification) and extracting the solution.

Session WB-27: Wednesday July 6, 10:30 - 12:00pm

Title: COIN-OR User Meeting
Chair: Robin Lougee-Heimer
Abstract: See agenda above.