Maintaining State in Propagation Solvers
Raphael M. Reischuk, Christian Schulte, Peter J. Stuckey, Guido Tack.
Constraint propagation solvers interleave propagation, removing impossible values from variable domains, with search. The solver state is modified during propagation. But search requires the solver to return to a previous state. Hence a propagation solver must determine how to maintain state during propagation and forward and backward search. This paper sets out the possible ways in which a propagation solver can choose to maintain state, and the restrictions that such choices place on the resulting system. Experiments illustrate the result of various choices for the three principle state components of a solver: variables, propagators, and dependencies between them. This paper also provides the first realistic comparison of trailing versus copying for state restoration.
In: Ian Gent, editor, Fifteenth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, Lisbon, Portugal, volume 5732 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 692-706. Springer-Verlag, September, 2009. DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-04244-7_54.
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