GAMS Corporation has released versions 21.6 and 21.7 which expanded some language capabilities. Release notes will be on the GAMS web site at http://www.gams.com/docs/release/release.htm#21.7. Some of the new features within these releases are discussed below. The software can be downloaded from http://www.gams.com/download/.
A 64 bit version was introduced for Linux. Some solvers exist only in 32 bit mode and are included as 32 bit on the 64 bit version as covered in the solver platform matrix on the GAMS web site.
Solver capability upgrades were introduced for BARON, COIN, CONOPT, KNITRO, MOSEK, NLPEC, XA and XPRESS. Included in this are free solvers called CoinCbc and CoinGlpk that are moderately capable mixed integer solvers as discussed at http://www.gams.com/solvers/coin.pdf and http://www.gams.com/gamscoin
Also a solver called BENCH is present that helps facilitate benchmarking of GAMS optimization solvers by calling all of the users licensed solvers that can work on a particular model and capturing the results in a LST file. See http://www.gams.com/solvers/bench.pdf.
Finally links are introduced to AMPL http://www.gams.com/solvers/gamsampl.pdf and LINGO http://www.gams.com/solvers/gamslingo.pdf.
Features have been added to permit or suppress parameter substitution when using the $OnPut and $OnEcho syntax.
Work files have been changed into a platform independent, more compact file. Thus work files on Windows can be transferred to Linux and vice versa. They now only consist of a single file and are only approx 50% of the previous file size. The reading and writing of such files is faster.
We have made the guide work better with the security features of windows XP service pack 2 that made it very hard to use. This caused us to need to only run in Adobe and not use the browser.
The release notes also indicate 21.6 and 21.7 contain new entries in the model and test model libraries.
This newsletter is not a product of GAMS Corporation although it is distributed with their cooperation.
June 9, 2005