Bonmin and Optimization Services
Kipp Martin
The Optimization Services (OS) project,
https://projects.coin-or.org/OS, is now configured to work with the
COIN-OR Bonmin nonlinear integer solver. This feature is available in
the trunk version of OS. It has been tested on various flavors of
Linux, Windows using the Microsoft cl compiler (with Intel ifort to
build the necessary Fortran libraries), Windows Cygwin (gcc), Windows
MinGW, and Mac OS X.
There are four ways to use the Bonmin solver with OS.
1) Solve problems locally using the OSSolverService executable.
For example, to solve a problem in the OS XML format with the
OSSolverService executable
OSSolverService -osil ../data/osilFiles/bonminEx1.osil -solver bonmin
The OSSolverService can also read Ampl nl files:
OSSolverService -nl ../data/amplFiles/bonminEx1.nl -solver bonmin
2) Build the model instance using the OSInstance API. The OSInstance
API provides an interface with methods to build a general nonlinear
integer program in-memory. See the OS User's Manual and the example
problem in
OS/examples/instanceGenerator
Once an in-memory osinstance object is available it is trivial to invoke
Bonmin.
DefaultSolver *solver = new BonminSolver();
solver->osinstance = osinstance;
solver->buildSolverInstance();
solver->solve();
3) Call a remote solver server running Bonmin. Examples of how to call
a remote solver service using OS Web services is given in
OS/examples/osRemoteTest.
4) Use either the AMPL or GAMS modeling language. If AMPL is used,
building the OS project provides an executable OSAmplClient that appears
to AMPL as a solver. The OSAmplClient can be invoked directly inside
AMPL to solve a problem with Bonmin. It is also possible to build the
model using the GAMS modeling language and then use GAMSlinks (see
https://projects.coin-or.org/GAMSlinks) to call the OS supported solvers
either locally or remotely.
The COIN-OR OS project now directly supports the following solvers:
Bonmin
Cbc
Clp
Cplex
DyLP
Glpk
Ipopt
Lindo
SYMPHONY
Vol
In addition, the Mosek ApS optimization solver and the Frontline Systems
Solver Platform SDK currently support OSiL for problem instance
representation of mixed integer linear programs.
See the User's Manual in the OS/doc folder and at
http://www.coin-or.org/OS/doc/osUsersManual_1.1.pdf
for more information on how to use the OS project.
Thank you,
--
Kipp Martin
Visiting Professor
University of Cincinnati
College of Business
Dept. of QAOM
525 Lindner Hall
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0130
kipp....@chicagogsb.edu
http://homepages.uc.edu/~martinrk/
https://projects.coin-or.org/OS
http://www.coin-or.org