Using coordination for cooperative constraint solving
Farhad Arbab, Éric Monfroy · 1998
In this paper we argue for an alternative way of designing cooperative constraint solver systems using a control-oriented coordination language. The idea is to take advantage of the coordination features of MANIFOLD for improving the constraint solver collaboration language of BALI. We demonstrate the validity of our ideas by presenting the advantages of such a realization and its (practical as well as conceptual) improvements of constraint solving. We are convinced that cooperative constraint solving is intrinsically linked to coordination, and that coordination languages, and MANIFOLD in particular, open new horizons for systems like BALI. 1 INTRODUCTION The need for constraint solver collaboration is widely recognized. The general approach consists of making several solvers cooperate in order to process constraints that could not be solved (at least not efficiently) by a single solver. BALI is a realization of such a system, in terms of a language for constraint solver collaborat...