Assisting domain experts to formulate & solve constraint satisfaction problems

Sleeman, D and Chalmers, S (2006) Assisting domain experts to formulate & solve constraint satisfaction problems. In Staab, S and Svatek, V, Eds. Proceedings Managing Knowledge in a World of Networks: 15th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2006), pages pp. 19-26, Podebrady, Czech Republic.

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Constraint satisfaction is a powerful approach to solving a wide class of problems. However, as many non-experts have problems formulating tasks as Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs), we have built a number of interfaces for particular kinds of CSPs, including crypt-arithmetic problems, map-colouring problems, and scheduling tasks, which ask highly focused questions of the user, c.f., the earlier MOLE/MORE, and SALT knowledge acquisition systems. Information from each of these interfaces is then transformed initially into a structured format which is semantic web compliant and is secondly transformed into the format required by the generic Constraint satisfaction problem solver. When this problem solver is run, the user is either provided with solution(s) or feedback that the problem is underspecified (when many solutions are feasible) or over-specified (when no solution is possible). Effectively the system has 3 distinct phases, namely; information capture, transformation of the information to that suitable for the standard problem solver, and thirdly the solving and user feedback phase. We are planning to analyse in detail a greater range of the CSP tasks, and to produce further UIs to support these tasks. Secondly, we plan to exploit the existence of the intermediary representation which is semantic web compliant, by enhancing the information about tasks with relevant information available from the semantic web.

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