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Tractable Combinations of Global Constraints

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Book cover Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8124))

Abstract

We study the complexity of constraint satisfaction problems involving global constraints, i.e., special-purpose constraints provided by a solver and represented implicitly by a parametrised algorithm. Such constraints are widely used; indeed, they are one of the key reasons for the success of constraint programming in solving real-world problems.

Previous work has focused on the development of efficient propagators for individual constraints. In this paper, we identify a new tractable class of constraint problems involving global constraints of unbounded arity. To do so, we combine structural restrictions with the observation that some important types of global constraint do not distinguish between large classes of equivalent solutions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

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

    David A. Cohen

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK

    Peter G. Jeavons & Evgenij Thorstensen

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK

    Stanislav Živný

Authors
  1. David A. Cohen
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  2. Peter G. Jeavons
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  3. Evgenij Thorstensen
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  4. Stanislav Živný
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information and Communication Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, P.O. Box Forum 120, 16440, Kista, Sweden

    Christian Schulte

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Cohen, D.A., Jeavons, P.G., Thorstensen, E., Živný, S. (2013). Tractable Combinations of Global Constraints. In: Schulte, C. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. CP 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8124. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40627-0_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40627-0_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40626-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40627-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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