Welcome to ILOG Concert Technology

This user's manual explains how to get the most from ILOG Concert Technology, the means for modeling, modifying, and solving optimization problems. Concert Technology enables you to formulate optimization problems independently of the algorithms that you may eventually choose to solve the problem. It provides an extendable modeling layer adapted to a variety of algorithms ready to use off the shelf. This modeling layer enables you to change your model in a variety of ways, without rewriting your application.

What Is Concert Technology?

Concert Technology offers a C++ library of classes and functions that enable you to define models for optimization problems and to apply algorithms to those models. Concert Technology supports algorithms for both constraint programming and math programming (including linear programming, mixed integer programming, quadratic programming, and network programming) solutions. It also allows you to extend the model and solution classes yourself.

This library is not a new programming language: it lets you use data structures and control structures provided by C++. Thus, the Concert Technology part of an application can be completely integrated with the rest of that application (for example, the graphic interface, connections to databases, etc.) because it can share the same objects.

Furthermore, you can use the same objects to model your problem whether you choose a math programming or constraint programming approach. In fact, Concert Technology enables you to combine these technologies simultaneously.

Innovative Modeling in Concert Technology

The editing facilities in Concert Technology enable you to modify your model in a variety of ways. In formal terms, since the model in Concert Technology is cleanly separated from the search algorithms in other ILOG products, such as ILOG CPLEX and ILOG Solver, you can make non monotonic changes in your model without undermining the completeness of your search algorithms. In practical terms, you can make the following changes in a model:

What You Need to Know

This manual assumes that you are familiar with the operating system where you are using Concert Technology. Since Concert Technology is written for C++ developers, this manual assumes that you can write C++ code and that you have a working knowledge of your C++ development environment.

Notation

Throughout this manual, the following typographic conventions apply:

Naming Conventions

The names of types, classes, and functions defined in the Concert Technology library begin with Ilo.

The names of classes are written as concatenated, capitalized words. For example:

IloNumVar

A lower case letter begins the first word in names of arguments, instances, and member functions. Other words in such a name begin with a capital letter. For example,

aVar

IloNumVar::getType

There are no public data members in Concert Technology.

Accessors usually begin with the keyword get followed by the name of the data member. Accessors for Boolean members begin with is followed by the name of the data member. Like other member functions, the first word in such a name begins with a lower case letter, and any other words in the name begin with a capital letter.

Modifiers usually begin with the keyword set followed by the name of the data member.

Related Documents

The Concert Technology 1.1 library comes with:

Other ILOG Products

If you have purchased licenses for additional ILOG products, such as ILOG CPLEX, ILOG Solver, ILOG Scheduler, ILOG Dispatcher, or ILOG Configurator, then the documentation in the standard distribution of those products includes the corresponding reference manuals and user's manuals for those licensed options.

Finding What You Need

Generally, classes and global functions with a name that begins Ilo support optimization modeling. In contrast, classes and global functions named Ilc generally support a constraint programming search for a solution. Names prefixed by CPX are C routines in the ILOG CPLEX library. There is a corresponding C++ member function in the class IloCplex for each of those C routines.

The ILOG Concert Technology Reference Manual documents primarily modeling objects and functions. The algorithms (derived from IloAlgorithm) to use with these models are documented in their respective product manuals.

For More Information

ILOG offers technical support, users' mailing lists, and comprehensive websites for its products, including ILOG Concert Technology, ILOG CPLEX, and ILOG Solver.

Technical Support

For technical support of Concert Technology, you should contact your local distributor, or, if you are a direct ILOG customer, contact:

Region 
Email 
Telephone 
Fax 
France 
concert-support@ilog.fr 
0 800 09 27 91(numéro vert) 
+33 (0)1 49 08 35 10 
Germany 
concert-support@ilog.de 
+49 6172 40 60 33 
+49 6172 40 60 -10 
Japan 
concert-support@ilog.co.jp 
+81 3 5211 5770 
+81 3 5211 5771 
North America 
concert-support@ilog.com 
1 877 ILOG TECH(toll free)1 650 567 8080 
+1 650 390 0946 
Singapore 
concert-support@ilog.com.sg 
+65 773 06 26 
+65 773 04 39 
Spain 
concert-support@ilog.es 
+34 902 170 295 
+34 91 372 9976 
United Kingdom 
concert-support@ilog.co.uk 
+44 1344 661630 
+44 1344 661601 

We encourage you to use e-mail for faster, better service.

Users' Mailing List

The electronic mailing list concert-list@ilog.fr is available for you to share your development experience with other Concert Technology users. This list is not moderated, but subscription is subject to an on-going maintenance contract. To subscribe to concert-list, send e-mail without any subject to concert-list-owner@ilog.fr, with the following contents:

subscribe concert-list

your e-mail address if different from the From field

first name, last name

your location (company and country)

maintenance contract number

maintenance contract owner's last name

Web Sites

There are two kinds of web pages available to users of Concert Technology: web pages restricted to owners of a paid maintenance contract; web pages freely available to all.

Web Pages for a Paid Maintenance Contract

The technical support pages on our world wide web sites contain FAQ (Frequently Asked/Answered Questions) and the latest patches for some of our products. Changes are posted in the product mailing list. Access to these pages is restricted to owners of an on-going maintenance contract. The maintenance contract number and the name of the person this contract is sent to in your company will be needed for access, as explained on the login page.

All three of these sites contain the same information, but access is localized, so we recommend that you connect to the site corresponding to your location, and select the Services page from the home page.

Web Pages for General Information

In addition to those web pages for technical support of a paid maintenance contract, you will find other web pages containing additional information about Concert Technology, including technical papers that have also appeared at industrial and academic conferences, models developed by ILOG and its customers, news about progress in optimization. This freely available information is located at these localized web sites:

Copyright © 2001 ILOG
http://www.ilog.com
 
 
 
 
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