Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP98

Constraints have emerged as the basis of a representational and computational paradigm that draws from many disciplines and can be brought to bear on many problem domains. This volume contains papers dealing with all aspects of c- puting with constraints. In particular, there are several papers on applications of constraints, re?ecting the practical usefulness of constraint programming. The papers were presented at the 1998 International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP'98), held in Pisa, Italy, 26{30 - tober, 1998. It is the fourth in this series of conferences, following conferences in Cassis (France), Cambridge (USA), and Schloss Hagenberg (Austria). We received 115 high quality submissions. In addition, 7 abstracts submissions were not followed by a full paper, hence were not counted as submissions. The program committee selected 29 high quality papers after thorough refereeing by at least 3 experts and further discussion by committee members. We thank the referees and the program committee for the time and e ort spent in reviewing the papers. The program committee invited three speakers: { Joxan Ja ar { Peter Jeavons { Patrick Prosser Their papers are in this volume.

Inhalt

Invited Papers.- Open Constraint Programming.- Constructing Constraints.- The Dynamics of Dynamic Variable Ordering Heuristics.- Submitted Papers.- On Completion of Constraint Handling Rules.- Error-correcting Source Code.- Optimized Q-pivot for Exact Linear Solvers.- Constraint Techniques for Solving the Protein Structure Prediction Problem.- Global Constraints for Partial CSPs: A Case-Study of Resource and Due Date Constraints.- Using Graph Decomposition for Solving Continuous CSPs.- Anytime Lower Bounds for Constraint Violation Minimization Problems.- Introducing External Functions in Constraint Query Languages.- A Note on Partial Consistencies over Continuous Domains.- Consistency Techniques in Ordinary Differential Equations.- Early Projection in CLP(R).- Suggestion Strategies for Constraint-Based Matchmaker Agents.- Compiling Semiring-based Constraints with clp(FD,S).- Combining Topological and Qualitative Size Constraints for Spatial Reasoning.- Constraint Representation for Propagation.- A Unified Framework for Interval Constraints and Interval Arithmetic.- Constraint-based Problem Decomposition for a Key Configuration Problem.- Fuzzifying the Constraint Hierarchies Framework.- Constraints for Object Recognition in Aerial Images -Handling of Unobserved Features.- Salsa: A Language for Search Algorithms.- Random Constraint Satisfaction: theory meets practice.- A Tableau Based Constraint Solving Toolkit for Interactive Graphical Applications.- Safe Datalog Queries with Linear Constraints.- Non-systematic Search and Learning: An empirical study.- A Generic Model and Hybrid Algorithm for Hoist Scheduling Problems.- Linear concurrent constraint programming over reals.- Using Constraint Programming and Local Search Methods to Solve Vehicle Routing Problems.- A Polynomial Time Local Propagation Algorithm for General Datafow Constraint Problems.- Stable Solutions for Dynamic Constraint Satisfaction Problems.- Posters.- Generation of Test Patterns for Differential Diagnosis of Digital Circuits.- Combine & Conquer: Genetic Algorithm and CP for Optimization.- Some Experiments on Learning Soft Constraints.- Scheduling Multi-Capacitated Resources under Complex Temporal Constraints.- Implementing Global Constraints with Index-Sets and Constraint Templates.- Generating feasible schedules for a pick-up and delivery problem.- An Impartial Efficiency Comparison of FD Constraint Systems.- Optimizing with constraints: a case study in scheduling maintenance of electric power units.- Some Surprising Regularities in the Behaviour of Stochastic Local Search.- Modelling CSP Solution Algorithms with Petri Decision Nets.- A Framework for Assertion-based Debugging in Constraint Logic Programming.- Parallel Execution Models for Constraint Propagation.- Using Blocks for Constraint Satisfaction.- Adaptive Solving of Equations over Rational Trees.- Telecommunication Application.- Optimal Placement of Base Stations in Wireless Indoor Telecommunication.