This is the guy from the hanselminutes interview...
Solver Foundation is not a port of Excel Solver - it is a ground-up implementation in managed code (C#). As TriinT said, the focus is on addressing optimization problems that commonly occur in finance, engineering, supply chain, etc. It's fair to say that there are things that Excel Solver offers that Solver Foundation currently does not (e.g. nonlinear programming), and things Solver Foundation offers that Excel Solver does not. In particular, there is a roster of solvers that are all accessible from a consistent, .Net friendly API.
It's not open source, but there is a solver plug-in model which allows you to use other solvers in place of the ones supplied by our team. In particular, open-source solvers such as lp_solve are supported.
Solver Foundation is not a port of Excel Solver - it is a ground-up implementation in managed code (C#). As TriinT said, the focus is on addressing optimization problems that commonly occur in finance, engineering, supply chain, etc. It's fair to say that there are things that Excel Solver offers that Solver Foundation currently does not (e.g. nonlinear programming), and things Solver Foundation offers that Excel Solver does not. In particular, there is a roster of solvers that are all accessible from a consistent, .Net friendly API.
It's not open source, but there is a solver plug-in model which allows you to use other solvers in place of the ones supplied by our team. In particular, open-source solvers such as lp_solve are supported.
Nathan