Auto-tabling for subproblem presolving in MiniZincShow others and affiliations
2017 (English)In: Constraints, ISSN 1383-7133, E-ISSN 1572-9354, Vol. 22, no 4, p. 512-529Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
A well-known and powerful constraint model reformulation is to compute the solutions to a model part, say a custom constraint predicate, and tabulate them within an extensional constraint that replaces that model part. Despite the possibility of achieving higher solving performance, this tabling reformulation is often not tried, because it is tedious to perform; further, if successful, it obfuscates the original model. In order to encourage modellers to try tabling, we extend the MiniZinc toolchain to perform the automatic tabling of suitably annotated predicate definitions, without requiring any changes to solvers, thereby eliminating both the tedium and the obfuscation. Our experiments show that automated tabling yields the same tables as manual tabling, and that tabling is beneficial for solvers of several solving technologies.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2017. Vol. 22, no 4, p. 512-529
Keywords [en]
MiniZinc, Modelling methodology, Presolving, Tabling, Artificial intelligence, Constraint model, Original model, Solving performance, Constraint theory
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-32426DOI: 10.1007/s10601-017-9270-5Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85020249248OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-32426DiVA, id: diva2:1153814
Funder
Swedish Research Council
Note
Funding details: Uppsala Universitet; Funding details: 2015-4910, VR, Vetenskapsrådet
2017-10-312017-10-312023-05-05Bibliographically approved