Complexity Of Constraints: An Overview Of Current Research Themes (lecture Notes In Computer Science)

Annotation Nowadays constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are ubiquitous in many different areas of computer science, from artificial intelligence and database systems to circuit design, network optimization, and theory of programming languages. Consequently, it is important to analyze and pinpoint the computational complexity of certain algorithmic tasks related to constraint satisfaction. The complexity-theoretic results of these tasks may have a direct impact on, for instance, the design and processing of database query languages, or strategies in data-mining, or the design and implementation of planners. This state-of-the-art survey contains the papers that were invited by the organizers after conclusion of an International Dagstuhl-Seminar on Complexity of Constraints, held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, in October 2006. A number of speakers were solicited to write surveys presenting the state of the art in their area of expertise. These contributions were peer-reviewed by experts in the field and revised before they were collated to the 9 papers of this volume. In addition, the volume contains a reprint of a survey by Kolaitis and Vardi on the logical approach to constraint satisfaction that first appeared in 'Finite Model Theory and its Applications', published by Springer in 2007 Front Matter....Pages - Introduction....Pages 1-2 Boolean Constraint Satisfaction Problems: When Does Post’s Lattice Help?....Pages 3-37 Basics of Galois Connections....Pages 38-67 Recent Results on the Algebraic Approach to the CSP....Pages 68-92 Dualities for Constraint Satisfaction Problems....Pages 93-124 A Logical Approach to Constraint Satisfaction....Pages 125-155 Uniform Constraint Satisfaction Problems and Database Theory....Pages 156-195 Constraint Satisfaction Problems with Infinite Templates....Pages 196-228 Partial Polymorphisms and Constraint Satisfaction Problems....Pages 229-254 Introduction to the Maximum Solution Problem....Pages 255-282 Present and Future of Practical SAT Solving....Pages 283-319 Back Matter....Pages -