I am evaluating OptaPlanner for a planning problem I have. I have seen several responses to this topic, but nothing quite like I am looking for.
I am looking for the capability to extend the problem on the fly; that is, as the planner is solving a problem.
For example, in the CloudComputing example, I would like to be able to add computers on the fly (to a point) while the problem is being solved. The easiest case is that the problem is initially over-constrained and to resolve this I would like to be able to add computers, and then replan.
Or, I would like to be able to add a lecture, or a lecturer in one of the scheduling problems, etc.
It seems like the OptaPlanner requires a static number of entities / variables at solve time.
Any pointers would be appreciated.
Take a look at the Real-time planning section of the OptaPlanner User Guide.
You could also look at the Travelling Salesman Problem example in optaplanner-examples. Specifically, look at the org.optaplanner.examples.tsp.swingui.TspPanel class and traverse down from there. It's a pretty standard implementation of real-time planning AFAIK. I can also recommend to run the TSP example first to "see" how it works.
Related
I'm using Optaplanner to make a schedule for a school. Every works good, except that it sometimes have gaps between the lessons, which I do not want. I have rules for punishing this but I think the search space is so big that it will take quite a while before it "fixes" this.
Is it possible to tell Optaplanner to try out some "selected/calculated" moves first and then continue with the moves it is supposed to do?
I'm using the time grain patterns with this.
It is possible to do, but not recommended. There is good literature on the subject here: https://www.optaplanner.org/docs/optaplanner/latest/move-and-neighborhood-selection/move-and-neighborhood-selection.html
I would start first by experimenting with configuring the generic moves that are provided out-of-the-box in optaplanner, which you can do by editing the XML file included with the distribution.
If a custom move is really what you need, you can refer to the docs above, but it is much harder to avoid bugs this way and you will want to enable full assert to double-check that score corruption is not occurring after implementation.
Is there a way to create an initial solution for OptaPlanner by hand, in Java code?
I know that I can write the constructionHeuristic in the config XML to create a good initial solution.
But if I can write a better initial solution than OptaPlanner founds, is there a way to start the planning from my solution?
Thanks,
Vilmos
There are several ways of giving OptaPlanner a custom solution:
You can generate any Solution you like ahead of time. If the solution you give to solver.solve(solution) is already initialized at the time, you do not need to call construction heuristics at all.
If you instead wish to take an uninitialized solution and initialize it yourself in OptaPlanner, look into CustomPhaseCommand. Several OptaPlanner examples use that technique, see Machine Reassignment as an example. (However, beware that this is not a public API and we therefore do not guarantee its long-term stability.)
I went over demos within quantstrat GitHub, also took a bootcamp course on how to use the package and read several posts and Q&As concerning signals and rules, however I am still failing to implement complex rules where thresholds are hit multiple times in a given sequence/chain in order to create my entry point.
By now I am pretty much convinced I yet don't understand the mechanics so I can stretch examples I went through to implement rules such as this:
Beforehand, my expectation is just to get a hint on how to build a cross-over or threshold rule that is 'aware' of its place in a workflow so I can expand it into more complex cases, such as the one in the image above.
I looked at the user guide http://docs.jboss.org/optaplanner/release/6.1.0.Final/optaplanner-docs/html_single/index.html#d0e2669
I looked at the example code from git, but still feel quite lost about how to model my planning problem (for example some special TSP variant, let's say TSPTW ). the way OptaPlanner user code is structured is that the user code is devided into several packages, and there is not a entire "end-to-end" flow of code, and as a developer I only see these "modules" , sort of. So as a result it's very difficult for me to figure out how to connect the dots, and how these "dots" interact together to accomplish the overall algorithm task.
the section in the link above "Model your planning problem " sort of touches on the above question I have, but still seems out of sync with the example code, so it's difficult to figure out how the current examples work, also it's difficult for me to see how to add my own special logic for the TSP variant .
is there a better "code walk-through" document to show the usage of the framework?
thanks
Yang
Take a look here this guy create a simple optaplanner project to test some concepts and learn how to use it.
When I look at optimization problems I see a lot of options. One is linear programming. I understand in abstract terms how LP works, but I find it difficult to see whether a particular problem is suitable for LP or not. Are there any heuristics that can help guide this decision?
For example, the work described in Is there a good way to do this type of mining? took weeks before I saw how to structure the problem correctly. Is it possible to know "in advance" that problem could be solved by LP, without first seeing "how to phrase it"?
Is there a checklist I can use to decide whether a problem is suitable for LP? Is there a standard (readable) reference for this topic?
Heuristics (and/or checklists) to decide if the problem at hand is really a Linear Program.
Here's my attempt at answering, and I have also tried to outline how I'd approach this problem.
Questions that indicate that a given problem is suitable to be formulated as an LP/IP:
Are there decisions that need to be taken regularly, at different time intervals?
Are there a number of resources (workers, machines, vehicles) that need to be assigned tasks? (hours, jobs, destinations)
Is this a routing problem, where different "points" have to be visited?
Is this a location or a "layout" problem? (Whole class of Stock-cutting problems fall into this group)
Answering yes to these questions means that an LP formulation might work.
Commonly encountered LP's include: Resource allocation.: (Assignment, Transportation, Trans-shipment, knapsack) ,Portfolio Allocation, Job Scheduling, and network flow problems.
Here's a good list of LP Applications for anyone new to LPs or IPs.
That said, there are literally 1000s of different types of problems that can be formulated as LP/IP. The people I've worked with (researchers, colleagues) develop an intuition. They are good at recognizing that a problem is a certain type of an Integer Program, even if they don't remember the details, which they can then look up.
Why this question is tricky to answer:
There are many reasons why it is not always straightforward to know if an LP formulation will cut it.
There is a lot of "art" (subjectivity) in the approach to modeling/formulation.
Experience helps a lot. People get good at recognizing that this problem can be "likened" to another known formulation
Even if a problem is not a straight LP, there are many clever master-slave techniques (sub-problems), or nesting techniques that make the overall formulation work.
What looks like multiple objectives can be combined into one objective function, with an appropriate set of weights attached.
Experienced modelers employ decomposition and constraint-relaxation techniques and later compensate for it.
How to Proceed to get the basic formulation done?
The following has always steered me in the right direction. I typically start by listing the Decision Variables, Constraints, and the Objective Function. I then usually iterate among these three to make sure that everything "fits."
So, if you have a problem at hand, ask yourself:
What are the Decision Variables (DV)? I find that this is always a good place to start the process of formulation. How many types of DV's are there? (Which resource gets which task, and when should it start?)
What are the Constraints?
Some constraints are very readily visible. Others take a little bit of teasing out. The constraints have to be written in terms of your decision variables, and any constants/limits that are imposed.
What is the Objective Function?
What are the quantities that need to be maximized or minimized? Note: Sometimes, it is not clear what the objective function is. That is okay, because it could well be a constraint-satisfaction problem.
A couple of quick Sanity Checks once you think your LP formulation is done:
I always try to see if a trivial solution (all 0s or all big
numbers) is not part of the solution set. If yes, then the
formulation is most probably not correct. Some constraint is
missing.
Make sure that each and every constraint is "related"' to
the Decision Variables. (I occasionally find constraints that are
just "hanging out there." This means that a "bookkeeping constraint"
has been missed.)
In my experience, people who keep at it almost always develop the needed intuition. Hope this helps.