Initialization

Before the FICO Xpress Optimization Suite can be used from any of the interfaces the Optimizer library must be initialized and the licensing status successfully verified. Details about licensing your installation can be found in FICO Xpress Installation Guide.

When Console Optimizer is started from the command line the initialization and licensing security checks happen immediately and the results are displayed with the banner in the console window. For the library interface users, the initialization and licensing are triggered by a call to the library function XPRSinit, which must be made before any of the other Optimizer library routines can be successfully called. If the licensing security checks fail to check out a license then library users can obtain a string message explaining the issue using the function XPRSgetlicerrmsg.

Note that it is recommended that the users having licensing problems use the Console Optimizer as a means of checking the licensing status while resolving the issues. This is because it is the quickest and easiest way to check and display the licensing status.

Once the Optimizer functionality is no longer required the license and any system resources held by the Optimizer should be released. The Console Optimizer releases these automatically when the user exits the Console Optimizer with the QUIT or STOP command. For library users the Optimizer can be triggered to release its resources with a call to the routine XPRSfree, which will free the license checked out in the earlier call to XPRSinit.

{
  if(XPRSinit(NULL)) printf("Problem with XPRSinit\n");
  XPRSfree();
}

In general, library users will call XPRSinit once when their application starts and then call XPRSfree before it exits. This approach is recommended since calls to XPRSinit can have non–negligible (approx. 0.5 sec) overhead when using floating network licensing.

Although it is recommended that the user writes their code such that XPRSinit and XPRSfree are called only in sequence note that the routine XPRSinit may be called repeatedly before a call to XPRSfree. Each subsequent call to XPRSinit after the first will simply return without performing any tasks. In this case note that the routine XPRSfree must be called the same number of times as the calls to XPRSinit to fully release the resources held by the library. Only on the last of these calls to XPRSfree will the library be released and the license freed.