From: garry@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Garry Wiegand)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: constraint satisfaction programming
Message-ID: <3859@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 25 Feb 88 18:48:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.3859
Posted: Thu Feb 25 13:48:37 1988
Reply-To: garry@oak.cadif.cornell.edu
Organization: Cornell Engineering && Ithaca Software, Inc.
Lines: 159
Xref: yunexus comp.ai:1403 comp.lang.misc:1098
 
A week ago I asked about "constraint-based languages", and since then a
number of people have replied. My thanks to you all - your notes have
been a considerable help, and have led me to a lot of good work.
 
A summary follows...
 
******************************************************************************
** From: rich@devvax.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Richard Pettit)
** Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
 
    See the next to last (January edition I think) of AI Expert. They have
    at least one article on constraint languages in it. No doubt there will
    be many more to follow.
 
    Rich
 
[There's another popular article too - in Byte, last September or so. GW]
 
******************************************************************************
** From: quiroz@cs.rochester.edu
 
    Take a look at ICCP'87.  Prof. Baldwin and I have a paper there (p.
    389) on a parallel constraint-based language.  There is a more
    extensive TR (number 208, "The Design of the Consul Programming
    Language") you might like to order by sending a message to Ms. Peggy
    Meeker (meeker@cs.rochester.edu).
 
    For more details, the person to contact is certainly Prof. Doug
    Baldwin (baldwin@cs.rochester.edu), who is conducting research on
    general-purpose constraint languages.
 
    Good luck with your research!
    Cesar
    --------
    Cesar Augusto  Quiroz Gonzalez
 
    Department of Computer Science     ...allegra!rochester!quiroz
    University of Rochester            or
    Rochester,  NY 14627               quiroz@cs.rochester.edu
 
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** From: jane@CCA.CCA.COM (Jane Eisenstein)
** Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
 
    Last fall, I ran into a nice book entitled "Constraint Programming
    Languages, Their Specification and Generation" by Wm Leler which is
    published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.  It "provides an
    introduction to the subject of constraint satisfaction, a survey of
    existing systems, and introduces a new technique that makes
    constraint-satisfaction systems significantly easier to create and
    expand" in a very readable fashion.
 
    The latter half of the book focuses on the author's general-purpose
    specification language called Bertrand that allows a user to describe a
    constraint-satisfaction system using rules.  The software described is
    available for a "nominal charge" from the author.
 
******************************************************************************
** From: bnfb@june.cs.washington.edu (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)
** Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
 
                A few of our Constraint Language References
 
 
    [Borning & Duisberg 86] Alan Borning and Robert Duisberg. Constraint-Based
                          Tools for Building User Interfaces. _ACM_
                          _Transactions_on_Graphics_, 5(4), October 1986.
                          ThingLab basics, object definer and Animus with an
                          emphasis on MVCish things.
 
    [Borning et al. 87]   Alan Borning, Robert Duisberg, Bjorn Freeman-Benson,
                          Axel Kramer, and Micheal Woolf. Constraint H
                          ierarchies. In _OOPSLA'87_Conference_Proceedings_,
                          pages 48-60, ACM SIGPLAN, October 1987.
 
    [Borning 81]          Alan Borning. The Programming Language Aspects of
                          ThingLab, A Constraint-Oriented Simulation Laboratory
                          . _TOPLAS_, 3(4):353-387, Oct 1981.
 
    The OOPSLA'87 one has a good bibliography...
 
    Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson
 
 
[The work of Prof. Borning's group on a general UIMS is wonderful - very
 much along the lines we've started thinking about. GW]
 
******************************************************************************
** From: Lindsay Errington <dlerrington%watdragon.waterloo.edu@RELAY.CS.NET>
** Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
 
    Constraint Logic Programming is currently getting alot of attention
    at logic programming conferences.
 
    You might try:
 
    Jaffar, Joxan and Lassez, Jean-Louis, "Constraint Logic Programming", Proc
    of the 14th ACM Conference on Principles of Programming Languages, Munich,
    January 1987.
 
    Jaffar, Joxan and Michaylov, Spiro, "Methodology and Implementation of
    a CLP System", Proc of the 4th International Conference on Logic Programming
   ,
    Melbourne Australia, May 1987, pp 196-218, MIT Press.
 
    Heintze, N.C., Michaylov, S., and Stuckey, P.J., "CLP(R) and Some Electrical
    Engineering Problems", Proc of the 4th International Conference on
    Logic Programming, Melbourne Australia, May 1987, pp 675-703, MIT Press.
 
    (I suspect that a number of people will send you the same citations)
 
    Jaffar's work is very interesting since it provides a semantic
    framework (if that makes any sense) for a whole family of constraint
    based languages.
 
    The bibliographies will point you to other work into constraints and logic
    programming.
 
    I hope this helps.
 
    Lindsay
 
******************************************************************************
** From: uw-beaver!ssc-vax!dickey%cornell.UUCP@tcgould.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Frederick
    J Dickey)
** Subject: Re: "Constraint-based" languages
 
    A book has been published recently called (I think) "cobstraint-
    based languages." The author is William Leler or Leder (sorry, I
    don't have it here at work with me so I can't give you a more
    accurate reference).
 
******************************************************************************
** From: mcvax!cwi.nl!lambert@uunet.UU.NET (Lambert Meertens)
** Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
 
    Here is a reference to a book that I haven't had an opportunity to look
    into yet since it is still being processed as a new acquistion by our
    library:
 
      W. Leler (1988).
      Constraint programming languages -- their specification and generation.
      Addison-Wesley series in computer science.
      Reading (MA), [etc.].
 
    I would be interested in hearing about further references you have or may
    receive, and in particular in relation to UIMS.
 
    --Lambert Meertens, CWI, Amsterdam; lambert@cwi.nl
 
******************************************************************************
 
I've also heard that at least some Prologs understand how to do arithmetic,
and that there's a commercial product called TK!Solver which does interesting
things. I haven't seen these myself yet.
 
Constraint languages seem to be very much still in their infancy. Lots of
room for some good work (hint hint!)  - I hope we'll be able to contribute
some too. Thanks again -
 
garry wiegand   (garry@oak.cadif.cornell.edu - ARPA)
                (garry@crnlthry - BITNET)