Analysis and Visualization Tools for Constraint Programming

1. Front Matter

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2. Debugging of Constraint Programs: The DiSCiPl Methodology and Tools

   1. Debugging of Constraint Programs: The DiSCiPl Methodology and Tools

      • Pierre Deransart, Manuel V. Hermenegildo, Jan Małuszynski

      Pages 1-20

3. Part I. Correctness Debugging

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21

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   2. An Assertion Language for Constraint Logic Programs

      • Germán Puebla, Francisco Bueno, Manuel Hermenegildo

      Pages 23-61

   3. A Generic Preprocessor for Program Validation and Debugging

      • Germán Puebla, Francisco Bueno, Manuel Hermenegildo

      Pages 63-107

   4. Assertions with Constraints for CLP Debugging

      • Claude Laï

      Pages 109-120

   5. Locating Type Errors in Untyped CLP Programs

      • Włodzimierz Drabent, Jan Małuszyński, Paweł Pietrzak

      Pages 121-150

   6. Declarative Diagnosis in the CLP Scheme

      • Alexandre Tessier, Gérard Ferrand

      Pages 151-174

4. Part II. Performance Debugging

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 175-175

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   2. Visual Tools to Debug Prolog IV Programs

      • Pascal Bouvier

      Pages 177-190

   3. Search-Tree Visualisation

      • Helmut Simonis, Abder Aggoun

      Pages 191-208

   4. Towards a Language for CLP Choice-Tree Visualisation

      • Christophe Aillaud, Pierre Deransart

      Pages 209-236

   5. Tools for Search-Tree Visualisation: The APT Tool

      • Manuel Carro, Manuel Hermenegildo

      Pages 237-252

   6. Tools for Constraint Visualisation: The VIFID/TRIFID Tool

      • Manuel Carro, Manuel Hermenegildo

      Pages 253-272

   7. Debugging Constraint Programs by Store Inspection

      • Frédéric Goualard, Frédéric Benhamou

      Pages 273-297

   8. Complex Constraint Abstraction: Global Constraint Visualisation

      • Helmut Simonis, Abder Aggoun, Nicolas Beldiceanu, Eric Bourreau

      Pages 299-317

5. Part III. Test Cases

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 319-319

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   2. Using Constraint Visualisation Tools

      • Helmut Simonis, Trijntje Cornelissens, Véronique Dumortier, Giovanni Fabris, F. Nanni, Adriano Tirabosco

      Pages 321-356

6. Back Matter

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Coordinating production across a supply chain, designing a new VLSI chip, allocating classrooms or scheduling maintenance crews at an airport are just a few examples of complex (combinatorial) problems that can be modeled as a set of decision variables whose values are subject to a set of constraints. The decision variables may be the time when production of a particular lot will start or the plane that a maintenance crew will be working on at a given time. Constraints may range from the number of students you can ?t in a given classroom to the time it takes to transfer a lot from one plant to another.Despiteadvancesincomputingpower,manyformsoftheseandother combinatorial problems have continued to defy conventional programming approaches. Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) ?rst emerged in the mid-eighties as a programming technique with the potential of signi?cantly reducing the time it takes to develop practical solutions to many of these problems, by combining the expressiveness of languages such as Prolog with the compu- tional power of constrained search. While the roots of CLP can be traced to Monash University in Australia, it is without any doubt in Europe that this new software technology has gained the most prominence, bene?ting, among other things, from sustained funding from both industry and public R&D programs over the past dozen years. These investments have already paid o?, resulting in a number of popular commercial solutions as well as the creation of several successful European startups.

• Constraint
• Debugging
• Prolog
• Scheme
• constraint debugging
• constraint programming
• constraint solving
• correctness debugging
• logic
• performances debugging
• program analysis
• program validation
• programming
• visualization

• Inria-Rocquencourt, Le Chesnay Cedex, France

  Pierre Deransart

• School of Computer Science, Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

  Manuel V. Hermenegildo

• Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköpings University, Linköping, Sweden

  Jan Małuszynski

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