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International Conference on Integration of Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research

CPAIOR 2015: Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming pp 271–287Cite as

The Smart Table Constraint

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9075))

Abstract

Table Constraints are very useful for modeling combinatorial problems in Constraint Programming (CP). They are a universal mechanism for representing constraints, but unfortunately the size of their tables can grow exponentially with their arities. In this paper, we propose to authorize entries in tables to contain simple arithmetic constraints, replacing classical tuples of values by so-called smart tuples. Smart table constraints can thus be viewed as logical combinations of those simple arithmetic constraints. This new form of tuples allows us to encode compactly many constraints, including a dozen of well-known global constraints. We show that, under a very reasonable assumption about the acyclicity of smart tuples, a Generalized Arc Consistency algorithm of low time complexity can be devised. Our experimental results demonstrate that the smart table constraint is a highly promising general purpose tool for CP.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICTEAM, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Jean-Baptiste Mairy & Yves Deville

  2. CRIL-CNRS UMR 8188, Université d’Artois, F-62307, Lens, France

    Christophe Lecoutre

Authors
  1. Jean-Baptiste Mairy
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  2. Yves Deville
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  3. Christophe Lecoutre
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jean-Baptiste Mairy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA

    Laurent Michel

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Mairy, JB., Deville, Y., Lecoutre, C. (2015). The Smart Table Constraint. In: Michel, L. (eds) Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming. CPAIOR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9075. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18008-3_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18008-3_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18007-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18008-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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