The function may be called by the names: h02dac or nag_mip_sqp.
Before calling h02dac, h02zkcmust be called with optstr set to ‘Initialize = h02dac’. Optional parameters may also be specified by calling h02zkc before the call to h02dac.
3Description
h02dac solves mixed integer nonlinear programming problems using a modified sequential quadratic programming method. The problem is assumed to be stated in the following general form:
with continuous variables and binary and integer variables in a total of variables; equality constraints in a total of constraint functions.
Partial derivatives of and are not required for the integer variables. Gradients with respect to integer variables are approximated by difference formulae.
No assumptions are made regarding except that it is twice continuously differentiable with respect to continuous elements of . It is not assumed that integer variables are relaxable. In other words, problem functions are evaluated only at integer points.
The method seeks to minimize the exact penalty function:
where is adapted by the algorithm and is given by:
Successive quadratic approximations are applied under the assumption that integer variables have a smooth influence on the model functions, that is function values do not change drastically when incrementing or decrementing an integer value. In practice this requires integer variables to be ordinal not categorical. The algorithm is stabilised by a trust region method including Yuan's second order corrections, see Yuan and Sun (2006). The Hessian of the Lagrangian function is approximated by BFGS (see Section 11.4 in e04ucc) updates subject to the continuous and integer variables.
The mixed-integer quadratic programming subproblems of the SQP-trust region method are solved by a branch and cut method with continuous subproblem solutions obtained by the primal-dual method of Goldfarb and Idnani, see Powell (1983). Different strategies are available for selecting a branching variable:
Maximal fractional branching. Select an integer variable from the relaxed subproblem solution with largest distance from next integer value
Minimal fractional branching. Select an integer variable from the relaxed subproblem solution with smallest distance from next integer value
and a node from where branching, that is the generation of two new subproblems, begins:
Best of two. The optimal objective function values of the two child nodes are compared and the node with a lower value is chosen
Best of all. Select an integer variable from the relaxed subproblem solution with the smallest distance from the next integer value
Depth first. Select a child node whenever possible.
This implementation is based on the algorithm MISQP as described in Exler et al. (2013).
Linear constraints may optionally be supplied by a matrix and vector rather than the constraint functions such that
Partial derivatives with respect to of these constraint functions are not requested by h02dac.
4References
Exler O, Lehmann T and Schittkowski K (2013) A comparative study of SQP-type algorithms for nonlinear and nonconvex mixed-integer optimization Mathematical Programming Computation4 383–412
Mann A (1986) GAMS/MINOS: Three examples Department of Operations Research Technical Report Stanford University
Powell M J D (1983) On the quadratic programming algorithm of Goldfarb and Idnani Report DAMTP 1983/Na 19 University of Cambridge, Cambridge
Yuan Y-x and Sun W (2006) Optimization Theory and Methods Springer–Verlag
5Arguments
1: – IntegerInput
On entry: , the total number of variables, .
Constraint:
.
2: – IntegerInput
On entry: , the number of general linear constraints defined by and .
Constraint:
.
3: – IntegerInput
On entry: , the number of constraints supplied by .
Constraint:
.
4: – const doubleInput
Note: the dimension, dim, of the array a
must be at least
when .
The th element of the matrix is stored in .
On entry: the
th row of a must contain the coefficients of the th general linear constraint, for . Any equality constraints must be specified first.
If , the array a is not referenced and may be NULL.
5: – IntegerInput
On entry: the stride separating matrix row elements in the array a.
Constraint:
.
6: – const doubleInput
On entry: , the constant for the th linear constraint.
If , the array d is not referenced and may be NULL.
7: – doubleOutput
On exit: the final residuals of the linear constraints .
On entry: must contain the lower bounds, , and the upper bounds, , for the variables; bounds on integer variables are rounded, bounds on binary variables need not be supplied.
Constraint:
, for .
10: – const IntegerInput
On entry: varcon indicates the nature of each variable and constraint in the problem. The first elements of the array must describe the nature of the variables, the next elements the nature of the general linear constraints (if any) and the next elements the general constraints (if any).
A continuous variable.
A binary variable.
An integer variable.
An equality constraint.
An inequality constraint.
Constraints:
, or , for ;
or , for ;
At least one variable must be either binary or integer;
Any equality constraints must precede any inequality constraints.
11: – doubleInput/Output
On entry: an initial estimate of the solution, which need not be feasible. Values corresponding to integer variables are rounded; if an initial value less than half is supplied for a binary variable the value zero is used, otherwise the value one is used.
On exit: the final estimate of the solution.
12: – function, supplied by the userExternal Function
confun must calculate the constraint functions supplied by and their Jacobian at . If all constraints are supplied by and (i.e., ), confun will never be called by h02dac and If , the first call to confun will occur after the first call to objfun.
On exit: may be set to a negative value if you wish to terminate the solution to the current problem, and in this case h02dac will terminate with fail set to mode.
2: – IntegerInput
On entry: the dimension of the array c and the
first
dimension of the array cjac. The number of constraints supplied by , .
3: – IntegerInput
On entry: the
second
dimension of the array cjac. , the total number of variables, .
On entry: the vector of variables at which the objective function and/or all continuous elements of its gradient are to be evaluated.
6: – doubleOutput
On exit: must contain ncnln constraint values, with the value of the th constraint in .
7: – doubleInput/Output
Note: the derivative of the th constraint with respect to the th variable, , is stored in .
On entry: continuous elements of cjac are set to the value of NaN.
On exit: the th row of cjac must contain elements of for each continuous variable .
8: – IntegerInput
On entry: if , h02dac is calling confun for the first time. This argument setting allows you to save computation time if certain data must be read or calculated only once.
9: – Nag_Comm *
Pointer to structure of type Nag_Comm; the following members are relevant to confun.
user – double *
iuser – Integer *
p – Pointer
The type Pointer will be void *. Before calling h02dac you may allocate memory and initialize these pointers with various quantities for use by confun when called from h02dac (see Section 3.1.1 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface).
Note:confun should not return floating-point NaN (Not a Number) or infinity values, since these are not handled by h02dac. If your code inadvertently does return any NaNs or infinities, h02dac is likely to produce unexpected results.
13: – doubleOutput
On exit: if ,
contains the value of the th constraint function at the final iterate, for .
If , the array c is not referenced and may be NULL.
14: – doubleOutput
Note: the derivative of the th constraint with respect to the th variable, , is stored in .
On exit: if , cjac contains the Jacobian matrix of the constraint functions at the final iterate, i.e.,
contains the partial derivative of the th constraint function with respect to the th variable, for and . (See the discussion of argument cjac under confun.)
If , the array cjac is not referenced and may be NULL.
15: – function, supplied by the userExternal Function
objfun must calculate the objective function and its gradient for a specified -element vector .
On exit: may be set to a negative value if you wish to terminate the solution to the current problem, and in this case h02dac will terminate with fail set to mode.
On entry: the vector of variables at which the objective function and/or all continuous elements of its gradient are to be evaluated.
5: – double *Output
On exit: must be set to the objective function value, .
6: – doubleInput/Output
On entry: continuous elements of objgrd are set to the value of NaN.
On exit: must contain the gradient vector of the objective function if , with containing the partial derivative of with respect to continuous variable ; otherwise objgrd is not referenced.
7: – IntegerInput
On entry: if , h02dac is calling objfun for the first time. This argument setting allows you to save computation time if certain data must be read or calculated only once.
8: – Nag_Comm *
Pointer to structure of type Nag_Comm; the following members are relevant to objfun.
user – double *
iuser – Integer *
p – Pointer
The type Pointer will be void *. Before calling h02dac you may allocate memory and initialize these pointers with various quantities for use by objfun when called from h02dac (see Section 3.1.1 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface).
Note:objfun should not return floating-point NaN (Not a Number) or infinity values, since these are not handled by h02dac. If your code inadvertently does return any NaNs or infinities, h02dac is likely to produce unexpected results.
16: – doubleOutput
On exit: the objective function gradient at the solution.
17: – IntegerInput
On entry: the maximum number of iterations within which to find a solution. If maxit is less than or equal to zero, the suggested value below is used.
Suggested value:
.
18: – doubleInput
On entry: the requested accuracy for determining feasible points during iterations and for halting the method when the predicted improvement in objective function is less than acc. If acc is less than or equal to ( being the machine precision as given by X02AJC), the below suggested value is used.
Suggested value:
.
19: – double *Output
On exit: with NE_NOERROR, objmip contains the value of the objective function for the MINLP solution.
20: – const IntegerCommunication Array
Note: the dimension, , of this array is dictated by the requirements of associated functions that must have been previously called. This array MUST be the same array passed as argument iopts in the previous call to h02zkc.
21: – const doubleCommunication Array
Note: the dimension, , of this array is dictated by the requirements of associated functions that must have been previously called. This array MUST be the same array passed as argument opts in the previous call to h02zkc.
On entry: the real option array as returned by h02zkc.
22: – Nag_Comm *
The NAG communication argument (see Section 3.1.1 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface).
23: – NagError *Input/Output
The NAG error argument (see Section 7 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface).
6Error Indicators and Warnings
NE_ALLOC_FAIL
Dynamic memory allocation failed.
See Section 3.1.2 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface for further information.
NE_BAD_PARAM
On entry, argument had an illegal value.
NE_BOUND
On entry, . Constraint: , for .
NE_CONSTRAINT
On entry, linear equality constraints do not precede linear inequality constraints.
On entry, nonlinear equality constraints do not precede nonlinear inequality constraints.
NE_DERIV_ERRORS
One or more constraint gradients appear to be incorrect.
One or more objective gradients appear to be incorrect.
NE_INFEASIBLE
Termination at an infeasible iterate; if the problem is feasible, try a different starting value.
NE_INFINITE
Penalty parameter tends to infinity in an underlying mixed-integer quadratic program; the problem may be infeasible. If is relatively low value, try a higher one, for example . Optional parameter .
NE_INITIALIZATION
On entry, the optional parameter arrays iopts and opts have either not been initialized or been corrupted.
NE_INT
On entry, . Constraint: .
On entry, . Constraint: .
On entry, . Constraint: .
NE_INT_3
On entry, and . Constraint: .
NE_INT_ARRAY_CONS
On entry, . Constraint: , or , for .
On entry, . Constraint: or , for .
NE_INTERNAL_ERROR
An internal error has occurred in this function. Check the function call and any array sizes. If the call is correct then please contact NAG for assistance.
See Section 7.5 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface for further information.
NE_NO_LICENCE
Your licence key may have expired or may not have been installed correctly.
See Section 8 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface for further information.
NE_NUM_DIFFICULTIES
The optimization failed due to numerical difficulties. Set optional parameter for more information.
NE_TOO_MANY
More than the maximum number of feasible steps without improvement in the objective function. If the maximum number of feasible steps is small, say less than , try increasing it. Optional parameter .
The optimization halted because you set mode negative in objfun or mode negative in confun, to .
NE_ZERO_COEFF
Termination with zero integer trust region for integer variables; try a different starting value. Optional parameter .
NE_ZERO_VARS
On entry, there are no binary or integer variables.
NW_TOO_MANY_ITER
On entry, . Exceeded the maximum number of iterations.
7Accuracy
Not applicable.
8Parallelism and Performance
Background information to multithreading can be found in the Multithreading documentation.
h02dac makes calls to BLAS and/or LAPACK routines, which may be threaded within the vendor library used by this implementation. Consult the documentation for the vendor library for further information.
Please consult the X06 Chapter Introduction for information on how to control and interrogate the OpenMP environment used within this function. Please also consult the Users' Note for your implementation for any additional implementation-specific information.
9Further Comments
None.
10Example
Select a portfolio of at most assets from available with expected return , is fully invested and that minimizes
where
is a vector of proportions of selected assets
is an indicator variable that describes if an asset is in or out
This section can be skipped if you wish to use the default values for all optional parameters, otherwise, the following is a list of the optional parameters available and a full description of each optional parameter is provided in Section 11.1.
h02zkc should be consulted for a full description of the method of supplying optional parameters.
For h02dac the maximum length of the argument cvalue used by h02zlc is .
Branch Bound Steps
Default
Maximum number of branch-and-bound steps for solving the mixed integer quadratic problems.
Constraint:
.
Branching Rule
Default
Branching rule for branch and bound search.
Maximum fractional branching.
Minimum fractional branching.
Check Gradients
Default
Perform an internal check of supplied objective and constraint gradients. It is advisable to set during code development to avoid difficulties associated with incorrect user-supplied gradients.
Continuous Trust Radius
Default
Initial continuous trust region radius, ; the initial trial step for the SQP approximation must satisfy .
Constraint:
.
Descent
Default
Initial descent parameter, , larger values of allow penalty optional parameter to increase faster which can lead to faster convergence.
Constraint:
.
Descent Factor
Default
Factor for decreasing the internal descent parameter, , between iterations.
Constraint:
.
Feasible Steps
Default
Maximum number of feasible steps without improvements, where feasibility is measured by .
Constraint:
.
Improved Bounds
Default
Calculate improved bounds in case of ‘Best of all’ node selection strategy.
Integer Trust Radius
Default
Initial integer trust region radius, ; the initial trial step for the SQP approximation must satisfy .
Constraint:
.
Maximum Restarts
Default
Maximum number of restarts that allow the mixed integer SQP algorithm to return to a better solution. Setting a value higher than the default might lead to better results at the expense of function evaluations.
Constraint:
.
Minor Print Level
Default
Print level of the subproblem solver. Active only if .
Constraint:
.
Modify Hessian
Default
Modify the Hessian approximation in an attempt to get more accurate search directions. Calculation time is increased when the number of integer variables is large.
Node Selection
Default
Node selection strategy for branch and bound.
Large tree search; this method is the slowest as it solves all subproblem QPs independently.
Uses warm starts and less memory.
Uses more warm starts. If warm starts are applied, they can speed up the solution of mixed integer subproblems significantly when solving almost identical QPs.
Non Monotone
Default
Maximum number of successive iterations considered for the non-monotone trust region algorithm, allowing the penalty function to increase.
Constraint:
.
Objective Scale Bound
Default
When internally scale absolute function values greater than or .
Constraint:
.
Penalty
Default
Initial penalty optional parameter, .
Constraint:
.
Penalty Factor
Default
Factor for increasing penalty optional parameter when the trust regions cannot be enlarged at a trial step.
Constraint:
.
Print Level
Default
Specifies the desired output level of printing.
No output.
Final convergence analysis.
One line of intermediate results per iteration.
Detailed information printed per iteration.
QP Accuracy
Default
Termination tolerance of the relaxed quadratic program subproblems.
Constraint:
.
Scale Continuous Variables
Default
Internally scale continuous variables values.
Scale Objective Function
Default
Internally scale objective function values.
No scaling.
Scale absolute values greater than .
Warm Starts
Default
Maximum number of warm starts within the mixed integer QP solver, see .