Formalizing configuration knowledge using rules with choices
Timo Soininen, Ilkka Niemelä · 1998
This paper studies the formal underpinnings of the product configuration problem. A rule-based language is proposed for expressing typical forms of knowledge interactions in configuration models, i.e. choices, dependencies between choices, optionality and defaults. The language is equipped with a declarative semantics that provides formal definitions for the main concepts in product configuration, i.e., configuration model, customer requirements, satisfiability of requirements and validity of a configuration. A key feature is that the semantics ensures that valid configurations are tightly grounded in the configuration rules by employing Horn clause derivability but without resorting to an explicit minimality condition on configurations. This type of groundedness has not been considered in previous work on product configuration. Avoiding minimality conditions has a favorable effect on the complexity of the configuration tasks. For example, the validity of a configuration as well as sat...