Constraint Programming - What is behind?

: Constraint programming is an emergent software technology for declarative description and effective solving of large, particularly combinatorial, problems especially in areas of planning and scheduling. Not only it is based on a strong theoretical foundation but it is attracting widespread commercial interest as well, in particular, in areas of modelling heterogeneous optimisation and satisfaction problems. In the paper we give a survey of technology behind constraint programming (CP) with particular emphasis on constraint satisfaction problems. We place the constraint programming in history context and highlight the interdisciplinary character of CP. In the main part of the paper, we give an overview of basic constraint satisfaction and optimization algorithms and methods of solving over-constrained problems. We also list some main application areas of constraint programming. Keywords: constraint satisfaction, search, consistency techniques, constraint propagation, optimization 1...