4 ms·
I haven't used OptaPlanner - what makes it better than Google OR-Tools, Gecode or other MiniZinc-compatible solvers? On the commercial NP-hard optimization fro
by unnah 6y ago
I haven't used OptaPlanner - what makes it better than Google OR-Tools, Gecode or other MiniZinc-compatible solvers?
On the commercial NP-hard optimization front Gurobi, CPLEX and to some extent XPRESS are surely formidable as well. Of course mixed-integer solvers don't always directly compete with constraint programming solvers, since some problems are better solved with one or the other kind of solver.
- ge0ffrey 6y agoIt scales better (for example in VRP we had case were OptaPlanner did in 5 minutes what Google OR-Tools did in hours), it can handle fairness and load-balancing constraints (= non-lineair constraints), it supports real-time planning (= changing the problem while solving it) and continuous planning, it uses OO input and constraint written in plain java (no math equations) and it integrates with the Java ecosystem (think REST, Jackson, JPA, Quarkus, Spring, ...). YMMV, I am very biased.
- throwaway189262 6y agoIt's much, much easier to use. We were able to get it working acceptably on a team with only algebra and basic calc knowledge. Really you don't even need that. It's more automatic and focuses on good performance out of the box, with custom solver phases and such only recommended if you have performance problems. Its also fully object oriented. The solver works on Java POJO's In addition, it has built in tools for unit testing and detecting score corruption. It's very much on the practical, rather than theoretical end of solvers. You can drop it into an existing Java project with zero fuss.