COmputational INfrastructure for Operations Research (COIN-OR) is a virtual community of developers and users of open-source software for operations research. Hosted by INFORMS, the COIN-OR Web site at http://www.coin-or.org is currently home to more than 20 open-source projects. COIN-OR provides an infrastructure for collaborative development and distribution of open software, standards, data and more. Web pages, mailing lists, version-controlled repositories, Wikis [a "Wiki" is a novel mechanism that allows any user to freely and simply edit a Web page's content. See http://wiki.org/ for more details], issue tracking tools and other resources are provided to promote the proliferation of open operations research tools.

All the contents of COIN-OR's online repositories are available free of charge under an open-source license. This type of license gives individuals access to source code and permission to reuse, modify and redistribute it. The open-source model for information dissemination provides a number of benefits.

• Cooperative development speeds implementation and deployment, im-proves code quality and provides a form of peer review for software.
  
  
• Open exchange of code and data supports reusability of code and reproducibility of computational performance results.
  
  
• Development of open standards for data formats, software library interfaces and communication protocols supports wide deployment of operation research technology and Web services.

COIN-OR's repositories contain modeling tools, interfaces, stand-alone implementations, libraries and frameworks for use in research and business. Projects in the areas of LP, MIP, SDP, NLP, MINL and more are available. More projects will appear soon. The available set of projects reflects the interests of the individuals who have participated to date. New projects that reflect the broad interests and needs of the O.R. community, such as resources for visualization, data mining, simulation, constraint programming, statistics, forecasting, spreadsheets and more are welcome.

COIN-OR Events at INFORMS


COIN-OR is planning the following events for the upcoming 2006 INFORMS annual meeting in Pittsburgh Nov. 5-8. For the latest information and details, visit www.coin-or.org/events/informs06.html.

Technical program. The technical program of the INFORMS annual meeting in Pittsburgh contains many opportunities to learn more about open source in the operations research community, including an invited cluster, "Open-Source Software: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data," co-sponsored by the INFORMS Computing Society. This 13-session cluster will highlight an array of open-source efforts that are underway in research, business and government, including:

• applications of the nonlinear optimization software IPOPT I & II,
  
  
• open-source optimization packages for engineering design,
  
  
• new in COIN-OR,
  
  
• mixed-integer nonlinear programming with COIN-OR,
  
  
• open-source branch-and-bound solvers from Sandia National Laboratories,
  
  
• cuts & constraints
  
  
• open source, distributed computing and operations research,
  
  
• open source modeling tools,
  
  
• easier to use: open-source software
  
  
• open-source application programming interfaces for optimization I & II, and
  
  
• open source in teaching.

More talks on COIN-OR related projects will be held in other tracks, including talks on:

• software for semidefinite programming, and
  
  
• applications of semidefinite programming.

Members and users meeting. The annual COIN-OR Members and Users Meeting will be held on Nov. 6. Established in 2000, COIN-OR has been managed by the educational nonprofit COIN-OR Foundation, Inc. since 2004. Officers of the foundation will conduct the meeting, present a summary of the major accomplishments in 2006 and lead an open discussion. The meeting is open. All interested conference attendees are welcome.

COIN-OR report. To further their mutual goals, the COIN-OR Foundation and the INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) formed a strategic partnership in 2006. A report on the 2006 activities of COIN-OR will be given at the ICS business meeting.

Cup competition. The second annual "COIN-OR INFORMS Cup" competition will be held in conjunction with the Pittsburgh meeting. Modeled after the cup competitions of English boarding schools, the rules are simple.

• The submission or nomination must contain a synopsis of a COIN-OR contribution or usage (industry, education, etc.) and a cover letter explaining the significance.
  
  
• The winner must accept the prize in person at the 2006 INFORMS Annual Meeting.
  
  
• Submissions should be sent to coin-cup@coin-or.org, and
  
  
• Submission deadline is Oct. 31.

Submissions will be judged by members of the INFORMS conference program committee and the COIN-OR Foundation. The actual awarding of the Cup will take place during a ceremony at a congenial locale to be announced. See www.coin-or.org/events.html for details. All entrants and their supporters are welcome to join in the celebration and regale (rile) the winner.

Exhibit booth. The COIN-OR initiative will be in booth No. 114 in the conference exhibit area, thanks to the largesse of INFORMS. Stop by the booth to: meet active members of the open-source community, learn about COIN-OR's mission, get assistance, download code, start your project on COIN-OR or become an associate member of the COIN-OR Foundation.

Need code? Got code? Get involved. At the INFORMS Annual Meeting, attend the COIN-OR Members & Users Meeting or drop by the COIN-OR booth in the Exhibit Hall. For more details on COIN-OR events at the conference, see http://www.coin-or.org/events/informs06.html. We look forward to seeing you there.






OR/MS Today copyright © 2006 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
All rights reserved.


Lionheart Publishing, Inc.
506 Roswell Road, Suite 220, Marietta, GA USA
Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969
E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com
Web URL: www.lionhrtpub.com


Web Site © Copyright 2006 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved.