Constraint programming is a powerful paradigm for solving combinatorial search problems that draws on a wide range of techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, databases, programming languages, and operations research. Constraint programming is currently applied with success to many domains, such as scheduling, planning, vehicle routing, configuration, networks, and bioinformatics.

The aim of this handbook is to capture the full breadth and depth of the constraint programming field and to be encyclopedic in its scope and coverage. While there are several excellent books on constraint programming, such books necessarily focus on the main notions and techniques and cannot cover also extensions, applications, and languages. The handbook gives a reasonably complete coverage of all these lines of work, based on constraint programming, so that a reader can have a rather precise idea of the whole field and its potential. Of course each line of work is dealt with in a survey-like style, where some details may be neglected in favor of coverage. However, the extensive bibliography of each chapter will help the interested readers to find suitable sources for the missing details. Each chapter of the handbook is intended to be a self-contained survey of a topic, and is written by one or more authors who are leading researchers in the area.

The intended audience of the handbook is researchers, graduate students, higher-year undergraduates and practitioners who wish to learn about the state-of-the-art in constraint programming. No prior knowledge about the field is necessary to be able to read the chapters and gather useful knowledge. Researchers from other fields should find in this handbook an effective way to learn about constraint programming and to possibly use some of the constraint programming concepts and techniques in their work, thus providing a means for a fruitful cross-fertilization among different research areas.

The handbook is organized in two parts. The first part covers the basic foundations of constraint programming, including the history, the notion of constraint propagation, basic search methods, global constraints, tractability and computational complexity, and important issues in modeling a problem as a constraint problem. The second part covers constraint languages and solver, several useful extensions to the basic framework (such as interval constraints, structured domains, and distributed CSPs), and successful application areas for constraint programming.

- Covers the whole field of constraint programming
- Survey-style chapters
- Five chapters on applications

Table of Contents

Foreword (Ugo Montanari) 
Part I : Foundations
Chapter 1. Introduction (Francesca Rossi, Peter van Beek, Toby Walsh) 
Chapter 2. Constraint Satisfaction: An Emerging Paradigm (Eugene C. Freuder, Alan K. Mackworth) 
Chapter 3. Constraint Propagation (Christian Bessiere) 
Chapter 4. Backtracking Search Algorithms (Peter van Beek) 
Chapter 5. Local Search Methods (Holger H. Hoos, Edward Tsang) 
Chapter 6. Global Constraints (Willem-Jan van Hoeve, Irit Katriel)
Chapter 7. Tractable Structures for CSPs (Rina Dechter)
Chapter 8. The Complexity of Constraint Languages
(David Cohen, Peter Jeavons) 
Chapter 9. Soft Constraints (Pedro Meseguer, Francesca Rossi, Thomas Schiex) 
Chapter 10. Symmetry in Constraint Programming
(Ian P. Gent, Karen E. Petrie, Jean-Francois Puget)
Chapter 11. Modelling (Barbara M. Smith) 
Part II : Extensions, Languages, and Applications

Chapter 12. Constraint Logic Programming (Kim Marriott, Peter J. Stuckey, Mark Wallace) 
Chapter 13. Constraints in Procedural and Concurrent Languages (Thom Fruehwirth, Laurent Michel, Christian Schulte)
Chapter 14. Finite Domain Constraint Programming Systems (Christian Schulte, Mats Carlsson) 
Chapter 15. Operations Research Methods in Constraint Programming (John Hooker) 
Chapter 16. Continuous and Interval Constraints(Frederic Benhamou, Laurent Granvilliers) 
Chapter 17. Constraints over Structured Domains
(Carmen Gervet) 
Chapter 18. Randomness and Structure (Carla Gomes, Toby Walsh)
Chapter 19. Temporal CSPs (Manolis Koubarakis)
Chapter 20. Distributed Constraint Programming
(Boi Faltings) 
Chapter 21. Uncertainty and Change (Kenneth N. Brown, Ian Miguel)
Chapter 22. Constraint-Based Scheduling and Planning
(Philippe Baptiste, Philippe Laborie, Claude Le Pape, Wim Nuijten)
Chapter 23. Vehicle Routing (Philip Kilby, Paul Shaw) 
Chapter 24. Configuration (Ulrich Junker)
Chapter 25. Constraint Applications in Networks
(Helmut Simonis)
Chapter 26. Bioinformatics and Constraints (Rolf Backofen, David Gilbert)

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Handbook of Constraint Programming

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Handbook of magma functions

1. (i) Suppose K is a conjugacy class of Sn contained in An; then K is called split if K is a union of two conjugacy classes of An. Show that the number of split conjugacy classes contained in An is equal to the number of characters χ ∈ Irr(Sn) such that χAn is not irreducible. (Hint. Consider the vector space of class functions on An which are invariant under conjugation by the transposition (12).)

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Character Theory of Finite Groups

This book classifies the maximal subgroups of the almost simple finite classical groups in dimension up to 12; it also describes the maximal subgroups of the almost simple finite exceptional groups with socle one of Sz(q), G2(q), 2G2(q) or 3D4(q). Theoretical and computational tools are used throughout, with downloadable Magma code provided. The exposition contains a wealth of information on the structure and action of the geometric subgroups of classical groups, but the reader will also encounter methods for analysing the structure and maximality of almost simple subgroups of almost simple groups. Additionally, this book contains detailed information on using Magma to calculate with representations over number fields and finite fields. Featured within are previously unseen results and over 80 tables describing the maximal subgroups, making this volume an essential reference for researchers. It also functions as a graduate-level textbook on finite simple groups, computational group theory and representation theory.

The Maximal Subgroups of the Low-Dimensional Finite Classical Groups

In this window, all groups are assumed finite. Here we collect a number of results that play a significant role in the book (further material of an elementary nature that we sometimes take for granted is easily available in textbooks such as [H], [R] and [A]).

Finite Group Theory

We present a new conceptual abstraction in symmetry breaking - the GE-tree. The construction and traversal of a GE-tree breaks all symmetries in any constraint satisfaction or similar problem. We give a polynomial-time algorithm for this construction in the case of CSPs with arbitrary value symmetries. We have implemented this technique, and supply experimental evidence of its practical effectiveness.

Tractable symmetry breaking using restricted search trees

The primitive permutation groups of degree less than 2500

We study the probability of generating a finite simple group, together with its generalisation P
 G,socG
 (d), the conditional probability of generating an almost simple finite group G by d elements, given that these elements generate G/socG. We prove that P
 G,socG
 (2) ⩽ 53/90, with equality if and only if G is A6 or S6, and establish a similar result for P
 G,socG
 (3). Positive answers to longstanding questions of Wiegold on direct products, and of Mel’nikov on profinite groups, follow easily from our results.

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The probability of generating a finite simple group

In this paper we use the Classification of the Finite Simple Groups, the O’Nan‐ Scott Theorem and Aschbacher’s theorem to classify the primitive permutation groups of degree less than 4096. The results will be added to the primitive groups databases of GAP and Magma .

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Colva M. Roney-Dougal

Papers

The Maximal Subgroups of the Low-Dimensional Finite Classical Groups

Tractable symmetry breaking using restricted search trees

The primitive permutation groups of degree less than 2500

The probability of generating a finite simple group

The Primitive Permutation Groups of Degree Less Than 4096