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Constraint propagation on Multiple Domains

[Page last updated on 2000/10/26.]

Antonio Fernandez
E.T.S. de Ingenieria Informatica
Departamento de Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computacion
Despacho 3.2.50
Universidad de Malaga
Teatinos s/n
29071-Malaga
Spain

Patricia M. Hill
School of Computing
The University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
England

Abstract:

In previous work we have presented a simple generic framework to solve constraints on any domain (finite or infinite) which has a lattice structure. The approach is based on the use of a single constraint similar to the indexicals used by constraint logic programming (CLP) over finite domains and on a particular definition of an interval lattice built from any computation domain. In this paper we generalise this work by providing a constraint propagation mechanism that allows the flow of information between different computation domains. This generalisation is done by letting the constraint operators be defined over more than one domain and describing new generic constraint operators that are defined for any user or system domain. We show, by means of examples, how this extension improves the expressiveness of the system and addresses novel proposals for constraint propagation.

Keywords:

Lattices, Constraint Solving, Indexicals, Solvers

Available: Gzipped Postscript, BibTeX entry.