Semirings for Soft Constraint Solving and Programming

Constraint satisfaction and constraint programming have shown to be very simple but powerful ideas, with applications in various areas. Still, in the last ten years, the simple notion of constraints has shown some deficiencies concerning both theory and practice, typically in the way over-constrained problems and preferences are treated. For this reason, the notion of soft constraints has been introduced with semiring-based soft constraints and valued constraints being the two main general frameworks.
This book includes formal definitions and properties of semiring-based soft constraints, as well as their use within constraint logic programming and concurrent constraint programming. Moreover, the author shows how to adapt existing notions and techniques such as abstraction and interchangeability to the soft constraint framework and it is demonstrated how soft constraints can be used in some application areas, such as security.
Overall, this book is a great starting point for anyone interested in understanding the basics of semiring-based soft constraints.

List of contents

1. Introduction.- 2. Soft Constraint Satisfaction Problems.- 3. Towards SCSPs Solutions.- 4. SCSP Abstraction.- 5. Higher Order Semiring-Based Constraints.- 6. Soft CLP.- 7. SCLP and Generalized Shortest Path Problems.- 8. Soft Concurrent Constraint Programming.- 9. Interchangeability in Soft CSPs.- 10. SCSPs for Modelling Attacks to Security Protocols.- 11. Conclusions and Directions for Future Work.

Product details

• Authors: S. Bistarelli, Stefano Bistarelli
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.02.2004
• EAN: 9783540211815
• ISBN: 978-3-540-21181-5
• No. of pages: 284
• Weight: 448 g
• Illustrations: XII, 284 p.
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Mathematics > Arithmetic, algebra; Algebra, C, Künstliche Intelligenz, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Computerprogrammierung und Softwareentwicklung, Theoretische Informatik, Compiler und Übersetzer, computer science, Logics and Meanings of Programs, Programming Techniques, Programming Languages, Compilers, Interpreters, Computer programming, Computer programming / software engineering, Computer architecture & logic design, Programming & scripting languages: general, Compilers & interpreters, Programming languages (Electronic computers), Computer logic, Computer Science Logic and Foundations of Programming, Compilers and Interpreters