Automatic Testing Framework for Linear Optimization Problems

Student examination is both time-consuming and boring, error-prone task for teachers. Nowadays a modern trend is to leave as much work as possible on computers. This paper proposes LPTest, a tool for automatic testing of linear programming problems solving. LPTest has been developed as plugin for LP System that is currently used at University of Economics in Prague, Department of Econometrics in Linear models, Operation research and other optimization courses (this LP System was introduced last year on Mathematical methods in Economics Conference). LP System consists of six modules (simplex method with dual simplex method and manually controlled computation, transportation problem, postoptimal changes with parametric programming, lower and upper bounded variables, integer programming and multicriteria programming), but in detail, LPTest is limited only to simplex method and dual simplex method algorithm and checks for proper content of simplex tables. LPTest is not intended only for teachers, students use both LPTest and LP System also for their exercises and homeworks, and not only for knowledge testing, because of its numerical and also algorithmic checks. LPTest as well as LP System has been created in Microsoft Office Access and it reads help from Microsoft Office Word document and exports simplex tables, results and also LPTest protocol into Microsoft Office Excel sheets.