[Coin-bcpdiscuss] Information on the children of a node

[Soumitra Pal]

Hi,

I am trying to implement the branching strategy used by "P.H. Vance. 
Branch-and-Price Algorithms for the One-Dimensional Cutting Stock 
Problem, Computational Optimization and Applications, 9(3):211–228, 
1998." for solving the cutting stock problem. The problem is solved 
using column generation.

According to the strategy, on one branch the solver to the subproblem 
should not generate one particular pattern (or column). So, I need to 
identify the node in the BCP_user_lp::initialize_new_search_tree_node() 
function. This should be easy if I could store the indices of the two 
children created in the BCP_user_lp::set_actions_for_children() function 
and check the index in the initialize_new_search_tree_node() function. 
However, I cant see how to do this. It will be great if somebody 
explains this.

Also, I will be thankful if you explain me the term "phase" as returned 
by the function current_phase() in the BCP parlance.

Thanks in advance,
Soumitra.