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Practical Investigation of Constraints with Graph Views

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Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming – CP 2000 (CP 2000)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1894))

Abstract

Combinatorial problems can be efficiently tackled with constraint programming systems. The main tasks of the development of a constraint-based application are modeling the problem at hand and subsequently implementing that model. Typically, erroneous behavior of a constraint-based application is caused by either the model or the implementation (or both of them). Current constraint programming systems provide limited debugging support for modeling and implementing a problem.

This paper proposes the Constraint Investigator, an interactive tool for debugging the model and the implementation of a constraint-based application. In particular, the Investigator is targeted at problems like wrong, void, or partial solutions. A graph metaphor is used to reflect the constraints in the solver and to present them to the user. The paper shows that this metaphor is intuitive and proposes appraoches to deal with real-life problem sizes.

The Investigator has been implemented in Mozart Oz and complements other constraint programming tools as an interactive visual search engine, forming the base for an integrated constraint debugging environment.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programming Systems Lab, Universität des Saarlandes, Postfach 15 11 50, D-66041, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Tobias Müller

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  1. Tobias Müller
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Rina Dechter

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Müller, T. (2000). Practical Investigation of Constraints with Graph Views. In: Dechter, R. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming – CP 2000. CP 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1894. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45349-0_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45349-0_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41053-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45349-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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