Compiling all possible conflicts of a CSP

  • Authors:

  • Alexandre Papadopoulos;Barry O'Sullivan

  • Affiliations:

  • Cork Constraint Computation Centre, Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, Ireland;Cork Constraint Computation Centre, Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, Ireland

  • Venue:
  • CP'09 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Principles and practice of constraint programming
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

In interactive decision-making settings, such as product configuration, users are stating preferences, or foreground constraints, over a set of possible solutions, as defined by background constraints. When the foreground constraints introduce inconsistencies with the background constraints, we wish to find explanations that help the user converge to a solution. In order to provide satisfactory explanations, it can be useful to know one or several subsets of conflicting constraints; such a subset is called a conflict. When computing such conflicts is intractable in an interactive context, we can choose to compile the problem so as to allow faster response times. In this paper we propose a new representation, which implicitly encompasses all conflicts possibly introduced by a user's choices. We claim that it can help in situations where extra information about conflicts is needed, such as when explanations of inconsistency are required.