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Constructing Constraints

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Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming — CP98 (CP 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1520))

Abstract

It is well-known that there is a trade-off between the expressive power of a constraint language and the tractability of the problems it can express. But how can you determine the expressive power of a given constraint language, and how can you tell if problems expressed in that language are tractable? In this paper we discuss some general approaches to these questions

We show that for languages over a finite domain the concept of an ‘indicator Problem’ gives a universal construction for any constraint within the expressive power of a language. We also discuss the fact that all known tractable languages over finite domains are characterised by the presence of a particular solution to a corresponding indicator problem, and raise the question of whether this is a universal property of tractable languages

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

    Peter Jeavons

Authors
  1. Peter Jeavons
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, 4111, Australia

    Michael Maher

  2. ILOG S.A., 9, rue de Verdun, BP 85, F-94253, Gentilly Cedex, France

    Jean-Francois Puget

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Jeavons, P. (1998). Constructing Constraints. In: Maher, M., Puget, JF. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming — CP98. CP 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1520. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49481-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49481-2_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65224-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49481-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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