Abstracting soft constraints: Framework, properties, examples

摘要

Soft constraints are very flexible and expressive. However, they are also very complex to handle. For this reason, it may be reasonable in several cases to pass to an abstract version of a given soft constraint problem, and then to bring some useful information from the abstract problem to the concrete one. This will hopefully make the search for a solution, or for an optimal solution, of the concrete problem, faster.