Constraint Programming with IBM ILOG Solver

In this lesson, you will learn how to:

IBM® ILOG® Solver is a C++ library that uses constraint programming to find solutions to optimization problems. One of the key advantages of constraint programming lies in the fact that it dissociates the representation of the problem, called the model, from the search algorithms used to solve it.

IBM ILOG Solver is based on IBM ILOG Concert Technology. Concert Technology is a C++ library that allows you to model optimization problems independently of the algorithms used to solve the problem. It provides an extensible modeling layer adapted to a variety of algorithms ready to use off the shelf. This modeling layer enables you to change your model, without rewriting your application.

Concert Technology supports algorithms for both constraint programming and mathematical programming (including linear programming, mixed integer programming, quadratic programming, and network programming) solutions.

This library is not a new programming language: it lets you use data structures and control structures provided by C++. Thus, the Concert Technology part of an application can be completely integrated with the rest of that application (for example, the graphic interface, connections to databases, and so on) because it can share the same objects.