COINORbased

COINORbased is an adjective used in software development to describe components, tools, or systems that are built on or designed to interoperate with the COIN-OR project, the open-source Computational Infrastructure for Operations Research. It connotes use of the COIN-OR libraries and interfaces, such as the Open Solver Interface (OSI) and the CoinUtils library, to provide modular optimization capabilities and solver interoperability.

The COIN-OR project, established to provide free software for operations research, offers a suite of solvers for linear programming, mixed-integer programming, nonlinear programming, and global optimization. COINORbased projects typically leverage these solvers, enabling researchers to combine modeling languages with a common backend and to publish reproducible optimization workflows.

Common examples of COIN-OR-based software include CBC (MILP solver), CLP (LP solver), Ipopt (nonlinear programming solver), and nonlinear/mixed-integer solvers such as Bonmin and Couenne. The ecosystem emphasizes open-source licenses, community governance, and modular design to facilitate integration with modeling tools like Pyomo, AMPL, or JuMP via OSI interfaces.

Advantages of COINORbased approaches include free access, transparency, and extensibility, as well as ease of collaboration across institutions. Limitations can include variable performance across problem classes, reliance on community maintenance, and sometimes a steeper integration effort compared with commercial solvers. The COIN-OR ecosystem remains a widely used option in academic research and industry where open, verifiable optimization tooling is valued.