Related papers: Constraint Propagation in Presence of Arrays
We study here constraint satisfaction problems that are based on predefined, explicitly given finite constraints. To solve them we propose a notion of rule consistency that can be expressed in terms of rules derived from the explicit…
Constraint propagation algorithms form an important part of most of the constraint programming systems. We provide here a simple, yet very general framework that allows us to explain several constraint propagation algorithms in a systematic…
Constraint programming is a family of techniques for solving combinatorial problems, where the problem is modelled as a set of decision variables (typically with finite domains) and a set of constraints that express relations among the…
We show that several constraint propagation algorithms (also called (local) consistency, consistency enforcing, Waltz, filtering or narrowing algorithms) are instances of algorithms that deal with chaotic iteration. To this end we propose a…
Arithmetic constraints on integer intervals are supported in many constraint programming systems. We study here a number of approaches to implement constraint propagation for these constraints. To describe them we introduce integer interval…
Enforcing local consistencies is one of the main features of constraint reasoning. Which level of local consistency should be used when searching for solutions in a constraint network is a basic question. Arc consistency and partial forms…
Numerical analysis has no satisfactory method for the more realistic optimization models. However, with constraint programming one can compute a cover for the solution set to arbitrarily close approximation. Because the use of constraint…
We provide here a proof theoretic account of constraint programming that attempts to capture the essential ingredients of this programming style. We exemplify it by presenting proof rules for linear constraints over interval domains, and…
Constraint propagation is a general algorithmic approach for pruning the search space of a CSP. In a uniform way, K. R. Apt has defined a computation as an iteration of reduction functions over a domain. He has also demonstrated the need…
Constraint propagation is one of the techniques central to the success of constraint programming. To reduce search, fast algorithms associated with each constraint prune the domains of variables. With global (or non-binary) constraints, the…
We document a connection between constraint reasoning and probabilistic reasoning. We present an algorithm, called {em probabilistic arc consistency}, which is both a generalization of a well known algorithm for arc consistency used in…
We propose Range and Roots which are two common patterns useful for specifying a wide range of counting and occurrence constraints. We design specialised propagation algorithms for these two patterns. Counting and occurrence constraints…
Constraint propagation algorithms implement logical inference. For efficiency, it is essential to control whether and in what order basic inference steps are taken. We provide a high-level framework that clearly differentiates between…
We study here the well-known propagation rules for Boolean constraints. First we propose a simple notion of completeness for sets of such rules and establish a completeness result. Then we show an equivalence in an appropriate sense between…
A natural and established way to restrict the constraint satisfaction problem is to fix the relations that can be used to pose constraints; such a family of relations is called a constraint language. In this article, we study arc…
A widely adopted approach to solving constraint satisfaction problems combines systematic tree search with constraint propagation for pruning the search space. Constraint propagation is performed by propagators implementing a certain notion…
Many existing global constraints can be encoded as a conjunction of among constraints. An among constraint holds if the number of the variables in its scope whose value belongs to a prespecified set, which we call its range, is within some…
We show that global constraints on finite domains like all-different can be reformulated into answer set programs on which we achieve arc, bound or range consistency. These reformulations offer a number of other advantages beyond providing…
Survey Propagation is an algorithm designed for solving typical instances of random constraint satisfiability problems. It has been successfully tested on random 3-SAT and random $G(n,\frac{c}{n})$ graph 3-coloring, in the hard region of…
We propose here a number of approaches to implement constraint propagation for arithmetic constraints on integer intervals. To this end we introduce integer interval arithmetic. Each approach is explained using appropriate proof rules that…