An empirical study of dynamic variable ordering heuristics for the constraint satisfaction problem

Abstract

The constraint satisfaction community has developed a number of heuristics for variable ordering during backtracking search. For example, in conjunction with algorithms which check forwards, the Fail-First (FF) and Brelaz (Bz) heuristics are cheap to evaluate and are generally considered to be very effective. Recent work to understand phase transitions in NP-complete problem classes enables us to compare such heuristics over a large range of different kinds of problems. Furthermore, we are now able to start to understand the reasons for the success, and therefore also the failure, of heuristics, and to introduce new heuristics which achieve the successes and avoid the failures. In this paper, we present a comparison of the Bz and FF heuristics in forward checking algorithms applied to randomly-generated binary CSP's. We also introduce new and very general heuristics and present an extensive study of these. These new heuristics are usually as good as or better than Bz and FF, and we identify problem classes where our new heuristics can be orders of magnitude better. The result is a deeper understanding of what helps heuristics to succeed or fail on hard random problems in the context of forward checking, and the identification of promising new heuristics worthy of further investigation.