Introduction and Basic Concepts

This part of the IBM ILOG Solver User's Manual describes the IBM® ILOG® Solver EA (Evolutionary Algorithm) Framework, part of IBM ILOG Solver IIM (Iterative Improvement Methods). This part will give you an introduction to the ideas behind Evolutionary Algorithms and will present the EA object support available via examples. The examples are presented as working lessons that move from a code skeleton to a finished program that you compile and execute.

This documentation does not provide an introduction to evolutionary or genetic algorithms in general, and it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the basic genetic algorithm concepts. An understanding of simple genetic algorithm operations such as mutation and combination (crossover) is assumed, although detailed knowledge of the construction of genetic algorithms is not assumed.

In this lesson, certain sections are labeled "Advanced Topic." These are topics which can be skipped on first reading.