COmputational INfrastructure for
Operations Research
- open source for the operations research community -
COIN-OR Events at INFORMS 2003, October 19-22.
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The Computational Infrastructure for Operations Research (COIN-OR**, or simply COIN) project is an initiative to spur the development of open-source software for the operations research community.
Why open source? The Open Source Initiative explains it well. When people can read, redistribute, and modify the source code, software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. The results of open-source development have been remarkable. Community-owned and -developed software written under open-source licenses have produced high-quality, high-performance, secure code -- code on which much of the Internet is run.
Why for OR? Consider the following scenario. You read about an optimization algorithm in the literature and you get an idea on how to improve it. Today, testing your new idea typically requires re-implementing (and re-debugging and re-testing) the original algorithm. Often, clever implementation details aren't published. It can be difficult just to replicate reported performance. Now imagine the scenario if the original algorithm was publicly available in a community repository. Weeks of re-implementing would no longer be required. You would simply check out a copy of it for yourself and modify it. Imagine the productivity gains from software reuse!
Our goal is to create for mathematical software what the open literature is for mathematical theory.
We want to build an open-source community for operations research software in order to speed deployment of models, algorithms, and cutting-edge research, as well as provide a forum for peer review of software similar to that provided by archival journals for theoretical research. This is a lofty goal, but we believe it's a worthwhile one. We have an idea, but we don't have all the answers. Only the community of users and contributors can define what is needed to make it a reality. For further information, please see the FAQs page, as well as the COIN-OR resources page.
The following is a list of projects currently being hosted by COIN-OR:
- BCP: a parallel branch-cut-price framework,
- CGL: a cut generation library,
- CLP: COIN L P, a native simplex solver,
- DFO: a package for solving general nonlinear optimization problems when derivatives are unavailable,
- IPOPT: an interior point algorithm for general large-scale nonlinear optimization.
- Multifario: a continuation method for computing implicitly defined manifolds.
- NLPAPI: a subroutine interface for defining and solving nonlinear programming problems.
- OSI: an open solver interface layer,
- OTS: an open framework for tabu search,
- SBB: Simple Branch and Bound, a branch and cut code,
- SMI: Stochastic Modeling Interface, for optimization under uncertainty,
- VOL: the Volume Algorithm,
** COIN-OR was formerly known as the "Common Optimization Interface for OR". The name (but not the acronynm) was changed to better reflect that COIN-OR is intended to host all types of OR software, not just "optimization" software.
