Rule-based programming and constraints

Krzysztof R. Apt

Abstract:

At various levels of abstraction constraint programming (CP) can be
viewed as an instance of rule-based programming.  At each level this
view sheds light on the essence of CP.

In particular, at the highest level it allows us to bring CP closer to
the computation as deduction paradigm.  At the middle level we can
explain various constraint propagation algorithms. Finally, at the
lowest level we can address the issue of automatic generation and
optimization of the constraint propagation algorithms.