The Ciao clp(FD) library. A modular CLP extension for Prolog

We present a new free library for Constraint Logic Programming over Finite Domains, included with the Ciao Prolog system. The library is entirely written in Prolog, leveraging on Ciao's module system and code transformation capabilities in order to achieve a highly modular design without compromising performance. We describe the interface, implementation, and design rationale of each modular component. The library meets several design goals: a high level of modularity, allowing the individual components to be replaced by different versions; highefficiency, being competitive with other TT> implementations; a glass-box approach, so the user can specify new constraints at different levels; and a Prolog implementation, in order to ease the integration with Ciao's code analysis components. The core is built upon two small libraries which implement integer ranges and closures. On top of that, a finite domain variable datatype is defined, taking care of constraint reexecution depending on range changes. These three libraries form what we call the TT> kernel of the library. This TT> kernel is used in turn to implement several higher-level finite domain constraints, specified using indexicals. Together with a labeling module this layer forms what we name the TT> solver. A final level integrates the CLP (J7©) paradigm with our TT> solver. This is achieved using attributed variables and a compiler from the CLP (J7©) language to the set of constraints provided by the solver. It should be noted that the user of the library is encouraged to work in any of those levels as seen convenient: from writing a new range module to enriching the set of TT> constraints by writing new indexicals

Constraint logic programming for fault-tolerant distributed systems

This paper presents key notions of Constraint Logic Programming (CLP), which is a young programming paradigm oriented toward solving difficult discrete highly combinatorial problems by making active use of constraints on the basis of mechanisms of Logic Programming. Being the subject of intensive research all over the world, CLP has already been used successfully in a large variety of application areas. As one of the important applications where CLP demonstrates its potential, we propose CLP-based procedures of solving the problems of optimal resource and task allocation at the stages of design and operation of Fault-Tolerant Distributed Technical Systems.Peer Reviewe

Partial order and contextual net semantics for atomic and locally atomic CC programs

We present two concurrent semantics (i.e. semantics where concurrency is explicitely represented) for CC programs with atomic tells. One is based on simple partial orders of computation steps, while the other one is based on contextual nets and it is an extensión of a previous one for eventual CC programs. Both such semantics allow us to derive concurrency, dependency, and nondeterminism information for the considered languages. We prove some properties about the relation between the two semantics, and also about the relation between them and the operational semantics. Moreover, we discuss how to use the contextual net semantics in the context of CLP programs. More precisely, by interpreting concurrency as possible parallelism, our semantics can be useful for a safe parallelization of some CLP computation steps. Dually, the dependency information may also be interpreted as necessary sequentialization, thus possibly exploiting it for the task of scheduling CC programs. Moreover, our semantics is also suitable for CC programs with a new kind of atomic tell (called locally atomic tell), which checks for consistency only the constraints it depends on. Such a tell achieves a reasonable trade-off between efficiency and atomicity, since the checked constraints can be stored in a local memory and are thus easily accessible even in a distributed implementation

The General Consistent Labeling (or Constraint Satisfaction) Problem

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154162/1/39015099114897.pd

Towards Testing Concurrent Objects in CLP

Testing is a vital part of the software development process. It is even more so in the context of concurrent languages, since due to undesired task interleavings and to unexpected behaviours of the underlying task scheduler, errors can go easily undetected. This paper studies the extension of the CLP-based framework for glass-box test data generation of sequential programs to the context of concurrent objects, a concurrency model which constitutes a promising solution to concurrency in OO languages. Our framework combines standard termination and coverage criteria used for testing sequential programs with specific criteria which control termination and coverage from the concurrency point of view, e.g., we can limit the number of task interleavings allowed and the number of loop unrollings performed in each parallel component, etc