SMA Lectures on Constraint Programming

In March 2001, I gave two 1 1/2 hour lectures on finite domain constraint programming as Guest Lecturer of the Singapore-MIT-Alliance. The lectures were part of the course Systems Optimisation by Robert Freund (MIT) and Teo Chung Piaw (NUS) in the programme High Performance Computing for Engineered Systems Spring 2001.

Overview and Material

Constraint Programming I
- Slides: PPT
- Paper: An Overview of Finite Domain Constraint Programming with Tobias Müller.
Constraint Programming II
- Slides: PPT
- Paper: Search and Strategies in OPL, Perron, Hentenryck, TOCL 2000
- Other material:
  - The OPL Optimization Programming Language, Pascal Van Hentenryck, MIT Press
  - OPL model for ACC 1997/1998

Programs

The slides use the programming language OPL. The demos shown in the class were programmed in the language Oz using the Mozart system. The Oz programs are available online. Many of these programs were written originally by Jörg Würtz, Christian Schulte and Gert Smolka as part of the Mozart documentation (see headers of source programs). I modified them in order to make them fit in the best way in the lecture. I thank Jörg, Christian and Gert for letting me use them.

Download

For convenient downloading, a zipped file containing the slides and programs is available online.

Any feedback welcome!