MPI-I-94-261

Finite domain constraints are one of the most important constraint domains in constraint logic programming. Usually, they are solved by local consistency techniques combined with enumeration. We argue that, in many cases, the concept of local consistency is too weak for both theoretical and practical reasons. We show how to obtain more information from a given constraint set by computing cutting planes and how to use this information in constraint solving and constrained optimization. Focusing on the pseudo-Boolean case CLP(PB), where all domains are equal to the two-element set $\{0,1\}$, we present specialized cutting plane techniques and illustrate them on a number of examples.

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Accepted for {ICLP'95}