Essentials of Constraint Programming

by Thom Frühwirth, Slim Abdennadher

The book is a short, concise and complete presentation of constraint programming and reasoning. The use of constraints had its scientific and commercial breakthrough in the 1990s. Programming with constraints makes it possible to model and solve problems with uncertain, incomplete information and combinatorial problems, as they are abundant in industry and commerce, such as scheduling, planning, transportation, resource allocation, layout, design and analysis. The theoretically well-founded presentation includes application examples from real life. It introduces the common classes of constraint programming languages and constraint systems in a uniform way. Constraint solving algorithms are specified and implemented in the constraint handling rules language (CHR).

This book is ideally suited as a textbook for graduate students and as a resource for researchers and practitioners. The Internet support includes teaching material, software, latest news and online use and examples of the CHR language.

156 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 1997

Reviews

[Brian Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend starting with Appendix A, which gives an overview of terminology and notation. This book is meant for graduate students or above. I don't even have a bachelor degree, but I have been learning Prolog and logic programming for several years. I found it difficult to get through this book, but then I have ADHD and poor time management skills. In the end, I value this book for its authoritative coverage of the theory of constraint programming, Constraint Handling Rules (CHR), and Constraint Logic Programming (CLP). I will likely keep it on my shelf indefinitely and revisit it for its coverage of various use cases.

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

PARADIGM FOR SOLVING COMBINATORIAL SEARCH

- Verbindung von Constraint-Lösen (Lösungsraum-Beschränken) und Suchverfahren (Backtracking) auf mathematischer Basis (Logikprogrammierung)

3.7 Sterne
Verdient vielleicht mehr, weil es auf recht wenig Seiten doch viel Information unterbringt. Bewegt sich im theoretischen Urschleim und ist aufs erste Lesen etwas anstrengend, aber ganz gut gegliedert, verlangt paar Logikkenntnisse. Für mehr Klarheit muss ich das Gelesene erst nacharbeiten und ausprobieren; kann mir gut vorstellen, dass die theor. Ausführlichkeit noch nützlicher wird.

Das Buch ist 20 Jahre alt. Keine Ahnung, ob Prolog heute noch das Maß der Constraint-Dinge ist (das freie SWI Prolog wird noch am aktivsten betreut, ECLiPSe evtl. wg. besserem Constraint-Handling). Mittlerweile gibt es für alle Standardprogrammiersprachen Libs/Erweiterungen für Constraint-Programmierung, allerdings sind deklarativ-logische Programmiersprachen wohl weniger "artfremd" (kürzere, elegantere Programme).

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