Inquiry About Licensing and Solver Efficiency for TAU-Argus

[ppdewolf]

On behalf of Sara Piombo, I quote her question (issue #284 in UserSupport repo):

Hello,
We are in the process of purchasing a license for one of the linear programming solvers supported by Tau-Argus. We have attempted to purchase the X-Press license but, unfortunately, the quoted price is really high. Therefore, we would like to explore the possibility of acquiring the C-PLEX license.
Before proceeding with the request and obtaining a quote, we believe it would be beneficial to inquire on the GitHub User Support portal to gather some information from other National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) that use Tau-Argus. Specifically, we are interested in the following:

1. Which of the two commercial LP solvers (Xpress and CPLEX) is more performant?
2. In general, which solver is predominantly used by NSIs that utilize TAU-Argus?
3. Is there a significant difference in performance between these two commercial solvers and the free solver available in Tau-Argus? If yes in which situations?

Thank you very much.
Best regards,
Luigi, Sara

[ppdewolf]

All I can say is that for Xpress license there should be a discount when you state that you will only use it for tau-argus. Also, depending on the exact type of license (stand-alone, floating, server, ...), the prices differ.