Third-Party Submission Tools

There are a number of tools for submitting jobs to NEOS that have been created by developers around the world.

  • SolverStudio for Excel is an add-in for Excel 2007 and later on Windows that allows users to build and solve optimization models within Excel using a variety of optimization modeling languages. SolverStudio allows models built using AMPL and GAMS to be solved using the NEOS Server. The SolverStudio & NEOS page explains how to use AMPL or GAMS on NEOS within SolverStudio.
  • OpenSolver is an Excel VBA add-in that allows users to build and solve spreadsheet optimization models on their own machine or using the COIN-OR solvers CBC (linear/integer), Bonmin (nonlinear) and Couenne (nonlinear) on the NEOS Server.
  • Pyomo is a Python-based open-source optimization modeling language with a diverse set of optimization capabilities. There are several interfaces to the NEOS Server.
    • From the command line, specify the particular solver and NEOS as the solver manager:
      pyomo solve --solver-manager=neos --solver=cbc diet1.py diet.dat
    • From within a Python script, specify NEOS within the SolverManagerFactory:
      instance = model.create('test_pyomo.dat')
      opt = SolverFactory("cbc")
      solver_manager = SolverManagerFactory('neos')
      results = solver_manager.solve(instance, opt=opt)
      results.write()
      

    For more information, consult the Pyomo documentation or the Pyomo forum.

  • Marcos Roberto Silva created a Java application for submitting GAMS models to NEOS and for viewing the results. The NEOS GAMS program can be downloaded. Also, there is a video demonstration of the program here.