Applications for decision support have two characteristics:
- A lot of information for the user
- The search for an optimal solution may take a long time
You can design a responding application which responds to user interaction, even during long-running searches for an optimal solution.
Assign two sessions for the application:
- Data session: allows interaction with the user; only solves small mathematical programming problems.
- Solver session: solves the Operations Research problem; may involve solving one or more mathematical programming problems.
AIMMS PRO platform is designed so that these two sessions can communicate with each other.
To adapt an optimization application to become a responding optimization application requires several stages of development tasks:
- Structure: Separate the search for an optimal solution as a separate solver session.
- Development: Make sure that you can read the solution at your own convenience, and work on the application-independent from an AIMMS PRO system.
- Finishing: Add progress status messages, ensure that intermediate solutions are saved, and add a way to feed new data to the solver session.
Tasks required in these stages are discussed below in more detail with links to further help.