Premium Solver Optimizes and Offers Full Support for Excel 2007

By DE Editors

Frontline Systems (Incline Village, NV) is shipping Version 7.0 of its Premium Solver Platform for Excel and seven large-scale Solver Engines that “plug into” both the Premium Solver Platform and the Solver Platform SDK V7.0. According to a press release, Frontline’s products are upward compatible with the Solver in Excel and offer a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking to better allocate scarce resources using optimization technology.

The Premium Solver Platform V7.0 supports Solver models spread across multiple worksheets in a workbook, with decision variables and constraints on any worksheet. Different models may be defined on each worksheet, and each model can include variables and constraints on any sheet in a workbook. In Excel 2007, the Platform V7.0 supports Solver models with 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows—well beyond the 256 column and 65,536 row limits in previous Excel releases.

Solution reports, previously limited to 65,536 rows, are now automatically “wrapped” and may be of virtually unlimited size, even in Excel 2000-2003. Report generation is typically 5-7 times faster for models of a few thousand variables, and faster for larger models.

When used with Frontline Systems’ new Risk Solver Engine V7.0, the Premium Solver Platform V7.0 can quickly solve simulation optimization problems. This is Frontline’s first step in a long-term effort to support optimal decision-making under uncertainty, using quantitative models in Excel.

Models can include random variables, defined by probability distributions, and formulas that depend on these random variables. Risk Solver Engine performs Monte Carlo simulation, with thousands of trials, on each change to the spreadsheet. Statistics for any uncertain formula, such as its mean and variance, Value at Risk, and percentiles, are available on the spreadsheet and can be used in the objective and constraints of a V7.0 optimization model.

These solvers can now deliver multiple solutions, not just a single best solution, for integer programming and global optimization problems. The best integer solutions (incumbents) for MIP problems, locally optimal solutions for global optimization problems, or best final-population members for non-smooth problems solved with the Evolutionary and OptQuest Solvers can be viewed in a worksheet report, or easily accessed in user VBA programs via the Platform’s new object-oriented API.

Also new in the Premium Solver Platform V7.0 are optimization models defined via functions on the worksheet, and Interactive Optimization, and a new, objected-oriented API (application programming interface), accessible from Excel VBA. It matches the object-oriented API of the Solver Platform SDK V7.0, Frontline’s tool for optimization and simulation using modern programming languages such as C#, C++, VB.NET, Java and MATLAB. The new API makes it much easier to develop powerful custom applications in Excel, and to move applications from Excel to a programming language.

Price: $1,495 (single user license). Existing users of the Premium Solver Platform V6.5 with current annual support subscriptions will receive free upgrades to the new product version. For a limited time, special pricing on Risk Solver Engine V7.0 is available to users who are purchasing or upgrading to the Premium Solver Platform V7.0.

For more information and to download a free trial version of the Premium Solver Platform V7.0, visit solver.com.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.