Removing Propagation Redundant Constraints in Redundant Modeling

A widely adopted approach to solving constraint satisfaction problems combines systematic tree search with various degrees of constraint propagation for pruning the search space. One common technique to improve the execution efficiency is to add redundant constraints, which are constraints logically implied by others in the problem model. However, some redundant constraints are propagation redundant and hence do not contribute additional propagation information to the constraint solver. Redundant constraints arise naturally in the process of redundant modeling where two models of the same problem are connected and combined through channeling constraints. In this paper, we give general theorems for proving propagation redundancy of one constraint with respect to channeling constraints and constraints in the other model. We illustrate, on problems from CSPlib (http://www.csplib.org/), how detecting and removing propagation redundant constraints in redundant modeling can significantly speed up constraint solving.

Finite Domain Bounds Consistency Revisited

A widely adopted approach to solving constraint satisfaction problems combines systematic tree search with constraint propagation for pruning the search space. Constraint propagation is performed by propagators implementing a certain notion of consistency. Bounds consistency is the method of choice for building propagators for arithmetic constraints and several global constraints in the finite integer domain. However, there has been some confusion in the definition of bounds consistency. In this paper we clarify the differences and similarities among the three commonly used notions of bounds consistency.