ECAI-2002 Conference Paper

[full paper]

A Theoretical Framework for Constraint Hierarchy Solvers

Roman Bartak

In the paper we propose a framework describing constraint hierarchy solvers and thus providing a theoretical foundation for construction of such solvers. The framework is based on the decomposition of the constraint hierarchy into constraint cells, i.e., chunks of constraints that are solved together. Using various decompositions we can describe a scale of constraint hierarchy solvers from the refining method (the constraint cells correspond to the hierarchy levels) till the local propagation methods (each constraint cell contains exactly one constraint). We highlight important features of the decompositions that form sufficient conditions in soundness and completeness theorems.

Keywords: Constraint Programming, Constraint Satisfaction, Nonmonotonic Reasoning

Citation: Roman Bartak: A Theoretical Framework for Constraint Hierarchy Solvers. In F. van Harmelen (ed.): ECAI2002, Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2002, pp.146-150.