Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

[ppcaric said:]

Hi.
I'm interested in CP techniques for solving scheduling problems. Few years ago I tried ILOG Solver integrating it with the ILOG Scheduler package. It was powerful in the modeling fase, but quite a bit obscure in the solving part. I also attended a course in Paris at ILOG headquarters, which cleared something on the Solver side, but I was hardly able to use it within the Scheduler part.
I see with pleasure that ILOG has been working hard in the last few years to improve this part of its optimization products, which I think can be of great use in production and manufacturing contexts.

The point for this new topic. In the SchedulingOPL.pdf presentation that can be found in ILOG site (titled "Getting Started: Modeling and Solving Scheduling Problems with Constraint Programming using ILOG OPL Studio") OPL is used to model and solve simple scheduling problems (namely: "chemical production scheduling" and "air traffic control").
The new features presented in the slides are exactly what I've been waiting for...

Problem: I downloaded the trial version of OPL Studio (5.5) and it doesn't include any scheduling-related feature (Activity, Resource, etc)  >:(
Has anybody purchased the latest full version of OPL? Could you, or ILOG staff would be much welcomed of course, verify if it includes these features or not?
Otherwise, is it at least possible to use them (through C++ or other programming languages) with the ILOG CP Optimizer package?

Thank you very much! This is quite important to plan the next updates to be purchased by the department I work for.


#ConstraintProgramming-General
#DecisionOptimization

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

[alain.chabrier said:]

Hello,

Support of Scheduling in OPL has been interrupted since OPL3.7 (i.e. OPL3.7 is the last one to have some scheduling support).

All CP support was interrupted but the non scheduling parts have been reintroduced recently.

Scheduling will be supported again (and better) in the coming OPL release. The syntax has been rethought to be easier to use.

There is currently a beta test going on on these new scheduling functionalities. If you are interested in being part of the beta test, I can give you some contact information.

Alain



#ConstraintProgramming-General
#DecisionOptimization

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

[ppcaric said:]

Thanks for your answer.

[quote author=alain.chabrier link=topic=186.msg477#msg477 date=1204822073]
Support of Scheduling in OPL has been interrupted since OPL3.7 (i.e. OPL3.7 is the last one to have some scheduling support).


Yes. That's the version I used for constraint programming and scheduling. I have seen that you've re-introduced CP in OPL and I can figure you're about to introduce back scheduling as well, since the ILOG presentation of CP Optimizer I cited above already showed some of the new scheduling syntax, which look easier indeed.
I'm very interested in it, so: yes, please consider us for beta testing it, thanks.
Meanwhile we'll update only OPL with mathematical programming waiting for scheduling to be fully back in order to also update our former Solver+Scheduler libraries.
Regards.
Pierpaolo Caricato
#ConstraintProgramming-General
#DecisionOptimization