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Production and Feature Releases
In our AIMMS release cycle we release Production and Feature Releases. A series of Feature Releases is followed by its Production Release. The most current Production Release is AIMMS 3.12 (March 2012). Currently, we are working on the first Feature Release of AIMMS 3.13.
AIMMS 3.12 Production Releases
On this page, you can read about the new features in AIMMS 3.12. More details can be found in the release notes.
Features introduced in AIMMS 3.12 FR1 (May 2011)
Features introduced in AIMMS 3.12 FR2 (August 2011)
- Pivot Table: Indentation Mode in row header
- Menu item: Close All Other Windows
- Function: IdentifierGetUsedInformation
Features introduced in AIMMS 3.12 FR3 (December 2011)
The AIMMS 3.12 Production Release and its release notes can be downloaded 
here. If you have any questions on these new or improved features, please contact us at support@aimms.com and we can discuss how we can help you.
New Features AIMMS 3.12
Below, you can find a description of all new features that have been introduced in AIMMS 3.12. The Feature Release in which the features have first been introduced, are mentioned after the feature name, in brackets, where FRx means Feature Release x.
Gantt chart extensions (FR1)
The Gantt chart has been extended with several new options, to improve the look-and-feel of the charts. The most important one is that the Gantt chart is now capable of displaying partly overlapping bars in the same row (with an adjustable vertical offset), such that each individual overlapped bar remains visible.
The other new options allow you to influence the height of the bars, the spacing between each row and whether or not to draw a border around a bar. You can find the new options on the Bars tab of the Gantt chart properties dialog box.
OpenOffice Calc functions (FR1)
The existing Excel functions have been renamed from Excel... to Spreadsheet::...
, to also allow communication with OpenOffice Calc spreadsheets. These functions make it possible to transfer data between AIMMS and OpenOffice Calc, to run Calc macro's on your spreadsheets and to print your Calc sheets, all from within the AIMMS language. Migrating from Excel to OpenOffice Calc (and vice versa) requires almost no change to your existing AIMMS code. In general, only providing the new name of your workbook will be enough. You can find the Spreadsheet functions in the AIMMS Function Reference.
More page objects with tooltip support (FR1)
The page object types that allow for user-defined tooltips have been extended with the following ones:
- Gantt chart
- Network object
- Table
- Composite Table
- Bar chart
- Curve
You can specify the tooltips in the properties dialog of the page objects, on the Text tab or (for Composite Table) the Tooltips tab.
Pivot Table: Indentation Mode in row header (FR2)
The layout of the row header in the Pivot Table has been extended with a new 'Indentation Mode'. This mode is especially useful if you want your row area to be more compact, such that you have more space available in the grid area. In the pictures below, the difference between the new Indentation Mode and the default Column Mode is illustrated. 
In 'Indentation Mode', the extra lines can (if specified) be used to display aggregator values. See the help and the Pivot Table example project for more details on this feature.
Menu item: Close All Other Windows (FR2)
A new menu item has been introduced: Window - Close All Other Windows. With this command you can close all the currently opened (non-docking) windows, except the one that you are currently working on.
Function: IdentifierGetUsedInformation (FR2)
The function IdentifierGetUsedInformation has been introduced, to allow AIMMS developers to check whether an identifier is in use in any of the pages, menus or data categories/case types. By combining it with a for-loop, you can use this function to quickly check for a set of identifiers whether each of them is still in use or not (the function arguments will return 1 or 0). After using this new function, you can use the already existing drag-and-find feature in the IDE to find out in which specific page, menu or data category the identifier is used.
Towards a New Data Management Scheme (FR3)
The current data management facilities in AIMMS are built upon the concept of a single data management file, containing all the cases that an AIMMS project can access. These data management files can become huge over time, and, hence, may be expensive to share with other users. Also, simultaneous access to the same data management file is not fully supported. Therefore, in practice, the only feasible approach to share case data with other users, is by using the import and export facilities of data management files, which leads to a cumbersome work flow.
With the upcoming release of the AIMMS PRO Platform, we recognize that the ability to collaborate and share case data becomes much more important. For this reason, we started work on an alternative data management 
scheme, in which cases are stored individually. While the default storage is on the (local or network) file system, the new data management scheme allows for the implementation of alternative storage backends (such as the integrated storage facilities implemented by the AIMMS PRO platform). The case load and save dialog boxes of the new data management scheme provide transparent access to any of the available storage backends.
We have started the work on a new case load and save functionality. With AIMMS 3.12 FR3, we are making the basic functionality available; an almost feature complete replacement of the current data management; only the support of compound cases is not yet available. For this reason, the current data management scheme is still the default. You can use the new data management scheme by changing the option Data Management Style. The corresponding new functions can be found in the AIMMS Function Reference, in the section Data Management Functions (using disk files and folders).
Monitoring Data Changes (FR3)
Through a new set of functions you can create data change monitors, that allow you to detect whether the data in a subset of identifiers of your model was changed during the execution. Although these functions are used by the new data management scheme to detect cases with unsaved data, you can use them independently in your model as well, for instance, to detect whether identifiers have been changed since they are read from a database, and hence have to be written back. You can find the new functions in the AIMMS Function Reference in the section Data Change Monitor Functions.
Uncertainty Constraints (FR3)
The Robust Optimization add-on in AIMMS has been extended 
regarding uncertainty constraints and the convex hull region of uncertain parameters. It is now possible to specify uncertainty constraints which are applied only to specific constraints in the model. This is controlled by the new Constraints attribute that has been added for uncertainty constraints. This allows for more flexibility in specifying the level of conservatism in the robust model.
A new ConvexHullEx operator has been introduced which offers the user more flexibility in specifying scenario-dependent uncertain parameters. The user can now specify self-declared uncertain parameters to be used as the weights in convex scenario combinations. These weights can model dependencies between scenarios and can be used in the Dependency attribute of adjustable variables.
Solver Updates (FR3)
Three new solver versions have been added to AIMMS 3.12 FR3:
- GUROBI 4.6,
- KNITRO 8.0, and
- BARON 9.3 (also available for Windows 64-bit)
In these new solver versions, the performance has been improved, especially the performance of the MINLP algorithm of KNITRO, which has a speed up of a factor 30 for some convex MINLP problems.
