Microsoft Solver Foundation

Soma announced on his blog today that there's a brand new MSDN forum and DevLabs home page for Solver Foundation. The new MSDN forum is a great place to ask questions, share examples, and provide feedback to the team. Visit the MSDN forum at ...

Microsoft Solver Foundation 3.1 is now ready for download. Solver Foundation provides a complete system for optimization model specification, connection to data sources, and access to best-of-breed solvers for Excel users and .Net programmers. The Express...

When modeling problems, one may come to a formulation that is not directly model-able using the Solver Foundation API, but that may be reformulated as a known Solver Foundation model type (LP, QP, CSP, etc).  Consider certain min-max problems, which...

In this post we will show you how to use third-party solvers with the Microsoft Solver Foundation Add In for Excel. We assume that you have installed the Express version of Solver Foundation 3.1 from solverfoundation.com . There are two steps in the process...

We've posted a new video that shows how to use the Excel add-in for Solver Foundation 3.0. If you are new to modeling, optimization, or Solver Foundation, we hope you'll find this video useful as you get started. For more, check...

In this post we introduce some utility methods to make it easier to work with arrays in Solver Foundation programs. Most real models involve either input parameters or output decision variables that involve collections. For example, in an investment portfolio...

The next release of Solver Foundation, Microsoft Solver Foundation 3.1, will be released next month. The feature set for 3.1 is the result of feedback from numerous partners and customers. This post summarizes some of the improvements. Improved Nonlinear...

We pleased to announce the release of Microsoft Solver Foundation v3.0. The Express edition is available at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/solverfoundation . The Standard and Academic Editions of Solver Foundation v3.0 will soon be available online via...

Several days ago, Microsoft Solver Foundation 3.0 was released , providing new features to build and solve nonlinear models. These features are at the solver, Solver Foundation Services, and modeling levels. Solver Foundation’s Compact Quasi Newton solver...

Microsoft Solver Foundation is a mathematical simulation, optimization, and modeling tool that you can use in Excel, Visual Studio, or integrated in any new or existing application by using the Solver Foundation Services. You can use any CLI language...

In a previous post, we discussed modeling tricks for min-max problems .  From there, it is simple to handle absolute values as well.  Consider a problem of the form minimize Abs( a * x + b) where a is a row vector and x is a column vector. ...

Since March 26, there have been 120+ downloads of the Patch for Excel2010 or VS2010 on the Microsoft Solver Foundation Code Gallery Downloads tab .  Several customers have followed up in the Discussions tab to share that the patch fixed the problems...

The Gurobi connector for Solver Foundation has been updated for Gurobi 4.5. You can obtain the connector by visiting the Solver Foundation forum . Here are installation and usage instructions for the connector. These instructions have been verified on...

In Solver Foundation 2.1 we added very basic support for VBA in the Excel Add-In. By obtaining the MSF add-in COM object you can call Solve, which has the same effect as clicking the “Solve” button in the Solver Foundation Ribbon: Here is a code sample...

In our last post we described the new API of Solver Foundation 3.0 for non-linear model s . In particular we described the new API for the Compact Quasi Newton (CQN) solver. We also showed how to model and solve non-linear models using the solver interface...

We are pleased to announce the release of Solver Foundation v2.1 . The Express edition is available now at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/solverfoundation . The Standard and Academic Editions of Solver Foundation v2.1 have been released-to-manufacturing...

Solver Foundation developers can update their environment to use the latest solver from Gurobi . In the Downloads area of the MSDN gallery site, the files: Gurobi 3.0 Solver and Plug-In for Microsoft Solver Foundation - 32-bit Gurobi 3.0 Solver...

The documentation for Solver Foundation has been revised since version 2.0 when a .chm file for the managed reference was included. For version 2.1, the documentation is now in the Program Files\Microsoft Solver Foundation\2.0.3. nnnn \Documents folder...

As announced on the Solver Foundation MSDN forum , over the next few days we'll be rolling out brand-new Solver Foundation sites: A brand new forum for questions and discussions. It has better search, code formatting, and more. A new download...

Parameters represent input data for a model. Parameters are most useful when they are associated with Sets. Associating Sets with Parameters allows you define tables (or if you like: vectors and matrices) of data: these are called "indexed parameters...

The Solver Foundation team has been hard at work on our next release. We want to take a break from the action to share some details about we plan to ship. Our focus is to broaden the range of real-world models that can be created, solved and analyzed...

Monday was an exciting day for the Solver Foundation team as Bob Muglia announced Microsoft's Technical Computing initiative . Microsoft is announcing its commitment to provide computing power and software tools to enable scientists, engineers and analysts...

Solver Foundation Version 2.1 introduced a new API class called LinearReport that allows programmatic access of the report data. You can use this class to retreive sensitivity and infeasibility information. Let’s discuss with a simple model:...

Mixed integer programming (MIP) models are one of the most commonly formulated Solver Foundation model types. “Mixed” refers to the fact that such models contain both integer and continuous (real) decision variables. People frequently want...

The next version of Solver Foundation is due to arrive before the end of April. The focus of Solver Foundation v2.1 is to improve the model development experience for Solver Foundation Services programmers and Excel add-in users. Here are some of the...