SCIP - a framework to integrate Constraint and Mixed Integer Programming

Constraint Programs and Mixed Integer Programs are closely related optimization problems originating from different scientific areas. Today’s state-of-the-art algorithms of both fields have several strategies in common, in particular the branch-and-bound process to recursively divide the problem into smaller subproblems. On the other hand, the main techniques to process each subproblem are different, and it was observed that they have complementary strengths. We present the programming framework Scip that integrates techniques from both fields in order to exploit the strengths of both, Constraint Programming and Mixed Integer Programming. In contrast to other proposals of recent years to combine both fields, Scip does not focus on easy implementation and rapid prototyping, but is tailored towards expert users in need of full, in-depth control and high performance.