[Coin-announce] Coopr 2.4 Released

[Hart, William E]

We are pleased to announce the release of Coopr 2.4 (2.4.3199). Coopr is a collection of Python software packages that supports a diverse set of optimization capabilities for formulating and analyzing optimization models.

The following are highlights of this release:

- Modeling
  - Concrete models are now supported
  - Nonlinear modeling extensions using the AMPL NL problem format
  - Add support for immutable versus mutable parameters.
  - Support for SOS1 and SOS2 constraints

- Data Integration
  - Can now import data from relational databases

- Solvers
  - Better support for Gurobi solver
  - Direct CPLEX solver interface
  - Interface to ipopt and nonlinear solvers via asl
  - ASL solver interface can now be specified with the form
        --solver=asl:ipopt

- Usability enchancements
  - Numerous bug fixes.
  - Updated messages to provide clearer indication of modeling errors 


Enjoy!

Coopr Developer Team
coopr-developers at googlecode.com


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About Coopr
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Coopr is a collection of Python software packages that supports a diverse set of optimization capabilities for formulating and analyzing optimization models.

A key driver for Coopr development is Pyomo, an open source tool for modeling optimization applications in Python. Pyomo can be used to define symbolic problems, create concrete problem instances, and solve these instances with standard solvers. Thus, Pyomo provides a capability that is commonly associated with algebraic modeling languages like AMPL and GAMS.

Coopr has also proven an effective framework for developing high-level optimization and analysis tools. For example, the PySP package provides generic solvers for stochastic programming.  PySP leverages the fact that Pyomo's modeling objects are embedded within a full-featured high-level programming language, which allows for transparent parallelization of subproblems using Python parallel communication libraries.

Coopr development is hosted by Sandia National Laboratories and COIN-OR:

 * https://projects.coin-or.org/Coopr
 * https://software.sandia.gov/coopr 

See https://software.sandia.gov/trac/coopr/wiki/GettingStarted for instructions for getting started with Coopr.  An installation script, coopr_install, is provided to simplify the installation of Coopr packages along with the third-party Python packages that they depend on.  This installer can also automatically install extension packages from Coin Bazaar.

See http://groups.google.com/group/coopr-forum/ for online discussions of Coopr.