Conflict-based program rewriting for solving configuration problems

Abstract

Many real-world design problems such as product configuration require a flexible number of components and thus rely on tuple generating dependencies in order to express relations between entities. Often, such problems are subject to optimization, preferring models which include a minimal number of constants substituted in existentially quantified formulas. In this paper we propose an approach based on automated program rewriting which avoids such substitutions of existentially quantified variables that would lead to a contradiction. While preserving all solutions, the method significantly reduces runtime and solves instances of a class of real-world configuration problems which could not be efficiently solved by current techniques. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.