Synopsis
Constraint programming is a powerful paradigm for solving combinatorial search problems that draws on a wide range of techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, databases, programming languages, and operations research. Constraint programming is currently applied with success to many domains, such as scheduling, planning, vehicle routing, configuration, networks, and bioinformatics.
The aim of this handbook is to capture the full breadth and depth of the constraint programming field and to be encyclopedic in its scope and coverage. While there are several excellent books on constraint programming, such books necessarily focus on the main notions and techniques and cannot cover also extensions, applications, and languages. The handbook gives a reasonably complete coverage of all these lines of work, based on constraint programming, so that a reader can have a rather precise idea of the whole field and its potential. Of course each line of work is dealt with in a survey-like style, where some details may be neglected in favor of coverage. However, the extensive bibliography of each chapter will help the interested readers to find suitable sources for the missing details. Each chapter of the handbook is intended to be a self-contained survey of a topic, and is written by one or more authors who are leading researchers in the area.
The intended audience of the handbook is researchers, graduate students, higher-year undergraduates and practitioners who wish to learn about the state-of-the-art in constraint programming. No prior knowledge about the field is necessary to be able to read the chapters and gather useful knowledge. Researchers from other fields should find in this handbook an effective way to learn about constraint programming and to possibly use some of the constraint programming concepts and techniques in their work, thus providing a means for a fruitful cross-fertilization among different research areas.
The handbook is organized in two parts. The first part covers the basic foundations of constraint programming, including the history, the notion of constraint propagation, basic search methods, global constraints, tractability and computational complexity, and important issues in modeling a problem as a constraint problem. The second part covers constraint languages and solver, several useful extensions to the basic framework (such as interval constraints, structured domains, and distributed CSPs), and successful application areas for constraint programming.
- Covers the whole field of constraint programming
- Survey-style chapters
- Five chapters on applications
From the Back Cover
Handbook of Constraint Programming
Edited by
Francesca Rossi, University of Padova, Italy
Peter van Beek, University of Waterloo, Canada
Toby Walsh, National ICT Australia & University of New South Wales, Australia
“This encyclopedic work covers twenty-plus years of research in constraint programming in a readable, accessible and appealing way. For someone outside the field wondering what Constraint Programming is all about, this is the perfect introduction, and the book will remain useful as a reference for years.”
― Michael Trick, Professor of Operations Research, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
“This book is an impressive and comprehensive coverage of Constraint Programming. The authors, many of whom are key contributors to the subjects described, have done a great job to make the important and interesting material accessible. A must-read for newcomers, and a must-have for the converts.”
― Joxan Jaffar, Professor and Dean, School of Computing, National University of Singapore
“This handbook captures the breadth and sophistication of the field of constraint programming (CP), a rapidly growing area of research with significant academic and commercial impact. The editors and contributors provide an outstanding overview of the core and cutting edge techniques in the field. This handbook will be essential to all CP researchers and practitioners. It will also be a great guide for researchers from related fields, such as optimization and operations research.”
― Bart Selman, Professor of Computer Science, Cornell University
Constraint programming is a powerful paradigm for solving combinatorial and numerical problems that draws on a wide range of techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, databases, programming languages, and operations research. Constraint programming is currently applied with success to many domains, such as scheduling, planning, vehicle routing, configuration, networks, and bioinformatics.
The aim of this handbook is to capture the full breadth and depth of the field of constraint programming and to be encyclopedic in its scope and coverage. Each chapter of the handbook is a self-contained survey of a topic, and is written by one or more authors who are leading researchers in the area.
The intended audience of the handbook is researchers, graduate students, upper-year undergraduates, and practitioners who wish to learn about the state-of-the-art in constraint programming. No prior knowledge about the field is necessary to be able to read the chapters and gather useful knowledge. Researchers from other fields will find the handbook an effective way to learn about constraint programming and to be able to use constraint programming concepts and techniques in their own work.
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